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Germany, Turkey, and Armenia

GERMANY
TURKEY

and

ARMENIA

A selection of documentary
evidence relating to the
Armenian Atrocities from
German and other sources

London.
J. J. KELIHER & CO.. Lto.

1917.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA

GERMANY
TURKEY

and

ARMENIA

A selection of documentary
evidence relating to the
Armenian Atrocities from
German and other sources

London.
J. J. KELIHER & CO., Ltd.

1917.

659311

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page

A. THE INVASION OF PERSIA 17

1. Letters from German Missionaries in

North-West Persia ... ... ... 17

B. THE SIX ARMENL\N VILAYETS ... 21

2. Van after the Turkish Retreat... ... 21

3. Moush. Statement by a German Eye-

witness ... ... ... ... ... 23

4. Erzindjan. Statement by two Danish

Red Cross Nurses, formerly in the
service of the German MiHtary Mis-
sion at Erzeroum ... ... ... 30

5. H — : Statement made by a Danish Red

Cross Nurse ... ... ... ... 44

6. Malatia. Statement by a German Eye-

witness ... ... ... ... ... 51

C. CILICLV AND NORTHERN SYRLV ... 53

7. Exiles from Zeitoun. Diary of a

Foreign Resident, communicated

by a Swiss gentleman 53

8. Information regarding events in

Armenia published in two periodi-
cals issued by German Missionary
S(x'ieties ... ... ... ... ... 61

9. Extracts from the Records of a German

who died in Turkey ... ... ... 66

TABLE OF CONTENTS, -Contmued.

Page

10. Narrative of a German Official of the

Bagdad Railway ... ... ... 80

11. The Amanus Passes. Statements by

two Swiss Ladies, resident in Turkey 86

D. ALEPPO 93

12. "A word to the accredited representa-

tives of the German people " by
Dr. Martin Niepage, teacher in the
German Technical School at Aleppo 93

13. Message dated 17th February, 1916,

from a German Lady (Fraulein O.) 112

E. THE PLACES OF EXILE 113

14. Der-el-Zor. Letter from a German

Lady Missionary ... ... ... 113

15. Exiles from the Euphrates: Report

from Fraulein O. ... ... ... 119

APPENDIX. REPORTS BY MOHAMME-
DAN OFFICERS 123

(i) A.B.'s Report ... 123

(2) C.D.'s Report 127

INTRODUCTION.

The blue book as to the treatment of the Armenians
which has recently been issued (Miscellaneous, Xo. 31,
1916) contains a large mass of evidence relating ta
facts Avhich, incredible as they are, have been so in-
controvertibly established that no doubt as to their exist-
ence can possibly be entertained by any reasonable
person. The greater part of the documents included
in the blue book does not, however, throw much light
on the attitude taken by the German public and the
German Government with reference to the crimes which
have been committed. The object of this pamphlet is
to bring before the public a collection of documents
specially selected for the purpose of throwing light on
this subject. Some of ihem are included in the blue
book, but the documents Xos. i, 6, 9, 10 and 12 have
not, as yet, been published in Great Britain or the
United States. The two documents printed in the
Appendix have no direct bearing on the questions
relating to the German attitude. But as they came
into the possession of the British authorities after the
publication of the blue book and are of special interest
as giving the impressions of two intelligent Turkish
officers,* it was thought right to include them.

*Thc particulars as to name and rank are g:iven in the original
documents, but must for obvious leasons be suppressed in this
pamphlet.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

A perusal of the documents included in this collec-
tion must convince the reader of three things: (i) that
the Germans in Armenia are as full of indignation, and
as anxious to see a stop put to the methods of exter-
mination applied by the Turkish Government, as the
most ardent friends of the Armenian cause in this
country; (2) that, owing to the wilful or reckless per-
version of the facts in the German press and the German
pamphlet-literature, and owing also to the indifference
and credulity of the general German public, the true state
of things is unknown or ignored by the majority ; (3) that
the German Government could have stopped the outrages
if they had desired to do so and that their non-inter-
ference was not in any way due to ignorance of the true
facts.

One very interesting document which has come to
the Editor's notice is of too confidential a nature to be
reproduced in this place. It is a Memorandum written
by a distinguished German scholar, whose name for
•obvious reasons has to be suppressed, but whose good
faith and whose critical acumen would be acknowledged
by every one of his countrymen whose powers of judg-
ment have not been perverted by the passion of war.
This Memorandum contains ample evidence of the fact
referred to above, that in consequence of the misstate-
tnents or suppressions of fact of which German writers
•on the subject have been guilty, public opinion in Ger-
many has entirely failed to realise the horrors of the
Armenian situation, and that some influential persons
even approve of the action of the Turkish authorities.
The old legend about the unscrupulousness of the
Armenian traders and their exploitation of Turkish
innocence and trustfulness — of which the groundless-
ness is convincingly demonstrated by the author of the
Memorandum — seems to be firmly believed through-

INTRODUCriON.

out Germany, and is made use of by those German
politicians and journalists who approve cruelty, pro-
vided only it serves the cause of German world-
dominion. Thus Count Reventlow in a passage quoted
in the Memorandum refers to these matters in the fol-
lowing terms: " The Turk is unsuspicious and good-
natured ; everywhere he furnishes a convenient object
for exploitation — up to a certain point and to a certain
degree; then despair seizes him and he rises against
his tormentors. Regrettable as such unlawfuT self-
defence may be from the point of view of civilisation,
it is obvious that the Armenians .... least of
all deserve the pity and the compassionate emotions of
v_the civilized world."

The author of the Memorandum disposes of this tirade
by saying that " it is of course unknown to the writer "
of the passage quoted by us ** that 80 per cent, of the
Armenian population, and particularly those who were
affected by the deportations, are peasant farmers, who
presumablv were not engaged in the exploitation of the
Kurdish brigands bv whom they were surrounded.
. The assumption that the deportation and anni-
hilation of the Armenian race was in the nature of
unlawful self-defence is so far removed from the true
facts that it does not require any refutation."

The whole German press — as stated by the author of
the Memorandinn — reproduced an interview with Dr.
Rifaat, a member of the Committee of Union and Pro-
gress, originally published in a Danish paper, in the .
course of which the interviewed politician spoke of "a ^
conspiracv embracing the whole Armenian population
residing m Turkey, threatening the very existence of
the country and intended to play Constantinople into
the hands of the Allies." He further stated that the
plot was discovered before it had ripened, that many

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

of the conspirators, including the Arabian Chief Abd-ul-
Kerim, had been arrested and punished, and that 21
of the adherents of the latter were hanged. The author
of the Memorandum makes the following comment on
this statement: " If Dr. Rifaat knows anything of an
Arabian conspiracy, it is impossible for us to verify this
finding. In any case an ' Arabian ' conspiracy is not
an ' Armenian ' conspiracy. But the number of the 21
conspirators hanged and the other contents of the
'interview' lead inevitably to the conclusion that Dr.
Rifaat did intentionally mislead 'public opinion, by
representing the plot of the Turkish opposition which
had already been discovered before the war/'' and which
aimed at the fall of the present government and the
murder of Talaat Bey and other Young Turk leaders,
as ' a conspiracy embracing the whole Armenian popu-
lation residing in Turkey.' "

The interview with Dr. Rifaat is also one of the trump-
cards played in a pamphlet published in Berlin under the
title of "The Armenian Question" by C. A. Bratter,
a person describing himself. as "a Citizen of a neutral
State and a German Journalist." This pamphlet (which
was written in order to counteract the influence of an
appeal in favour of the Armenians over the signa-
tures of a number of distinguished Swiss residents)
is minutely analyzed by the author of the Memoran-
dum, together with its pretended sources of informa-
tion ; and he demonstrates irrefutably its utter untrust-
worthiness as well as the bad faith of its writer. He
significantly adds : " How forgetful and how uncritical
must any reader be to whom it is possible to present
such lies J '^^*

* The italics are those of the author of the Memorandum.
** Here ag-ain the italics are those of the author of the
Memorandum,

INTRODUCTION,

Being ourselves in a position of greater freedom, we
can say that this forgetiulness and this want of critical
power are not surprising in the German public, having
regard to the fact that their Government is in close alli-
ance with the perpetrators of the crimes which Bratter
and other persons of the same mental and moral calibre
try to explain away or justify, and which could and
would have been prevented long ago if that Govern-
ment had not disregarded the elementary dictates of
humanity.

The German scholar's Memorandum contains some /
very interesting evidence showing: (a) that the Arme-
nian leaders, far from engaging in an anti-Turkish con-
spiracy either before or during the war, were entirely
loyal to the Turkish Government, in fact so loyal that
this was made a cause of complaint by some of the
Turkish opponents of the Committee of Union and Pro-
gress; (b) that the policy finally adopted with regard
to the Armenians was originally opposed bv some of
the members of the ruling party, but when so adopted
was a deliberate policy of extermination ; (c) that the
acts of resistance on the part of the Armenians, which
are relied upon as an excuse for their treatment, were
isolated acts due in each case to particularly grave pro-
vocation ; that, in every instance except that of Zeitoun,
they were later in date than the beginning of the depor-
tations, and were in fact provoked by the fear of suffer-
ing the fate which had already overtaken neighbour-
ing Armenian communities [see historical summary in
blue book]; (d) that some of the other excuses put for-
ward are so much at variance with the well-known facts
that thev could only deceive persons unable or unwilling
to ascertain the truth.

As regards the lovalty of the Turkish Armenians,
it is shown by extracts from leading papers, circulars

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

sent out by the ecclesiastical dignitaries and by the
" Dashnakzagan " (the only influential party organ-
isation of the Armenians), as well as by several
ofificial announcements of the Turkish Government or
of its agents, issued as late as August, 1915, that that
loyalty was not only the policy declared by the Arme-
nian leaders and carried out by the bulk of the popula-
tion, but that it was also fully acknowledged by the
authorities.
^ In a letter dater the 26th February, 1915, written by
Enver Pasha to the Armenian Bishop of Konia, the
former says: " I avail myself of this opportunity to tell
you that the Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Army
conscientiously perform their duties in the theatre of
war, as I can testify from personal observation. I beg
of you to communicate to the Armenian people, whose
perfect devotion to the Ottoman Government is well
known, the expression of my satisfaction and grati-
tude." Several other testimonies of a similar kind are
quoted in the Memorandum.

In the days of Abd-ul-Hamid the '* Dashnakza-
gan " were closely allied with the Committee of Union
and Progress, and several of the members of that
Committee received considerable help and protection
from the Armenians. Those among them, whose sense
of gratitude was not entirely destroyed by racial fanati-
cism, were therefore inclined to oppose the sinister
schemes of their less scrupulous colleagues. These
schemes, however, were the natural result of the ten-
dencies which had gradually gained the upper hand
in the Committee of Union and Progress, which Com-
mittee, as is well known, had met with considerable
opposition in some powerful sections of the Turkish .
population, and for the sake of removing that opposi- '*
tion had been driven mto a policy of Pan-Islamism.

INTRODUCTION.

This policy had already been proclaimed in a report
presented to the Congress of the Young Turk party
held in 191 1, on which occasion it was urged that
" sooner or later the complete Ottomanisation of all
Turkish subjects must be carried through, but that it
was clear that this object could never be obtained by
persuasion, and that the force of arms would have to be
resorted to." The nationalities in the said report are
declared to be a " quantite negligeable " ; ihey might
keep their religion, but not their language.

The first symptoms of the fact that the advocates of
the policy of ''thorough " against the Armenians had
overcome the resistance of their more scrupulous col-
leagues appeared on the 18/31 March, 1915, when the
press organ of the " Dashnakzagan " was suppressed.
On the 12^25 April 235 leading Armenians were arrested
in Constantinople and deported. The excuse given by
Talaat Bey to Vartkes, one of the Armenian members
of the Ottoman Parliament, shows: (i) that the destruc-
tion of the Armenians had then been definitely decided
on ; (2) that no act of disloyalty on the part of the Arme-
nians could have been adduced for the justification of
this decision. These are Talaat's words: '' Inthedays
of our weakness vou put \T)ur knife to our ihroatbv
raisTng tlie~ ciuestion of reform. For thai reason we
wFll n?)vv avail oursehes of our present Ta\'Ourable situ-
atT6nrt0f"the pii r^pOsFoFscatterlng youF^epple to such
an extent that for the next fiTty^ y^eaTsT^IPtTTouglrt of
reforms^vijl be driven out of your heads." Vartkes
thereupon said: "Then iT is the Intention to continue
the work of Abd-ul-Hamid ?" Talaat laconically replied,
"Yes." As pointed out by the author of the Memor-
andum, the movement for reform referred to by Talaat
had for its only object the protection of the life and pro-
perty of the Armenians against the attacks of Kurdish

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

brigands; the reforms had been stipulated for by Art.
6i of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 and had been con-
stantly supported by the Great Powers, including Ger-
many, which last named power had been specially active
in that behalf during the year 1913.

The Constantinople arrests were soon followed by
the deportations in the provinces and many acts of
violence. The two members of Parliament, Zohrab and
Vartkes, were arrested shortly " alter the interview of
meTatter with Talaat; they were deported and mur-
dered. Thenceforth the policy of extermination mani-
fested itself in all its nakedness. One of the principal
officials in the Turkish Ministry of Justice said to an
Armenian : " There is not sufficient room in this Ernpire
for you and ourselves; it would be unpardonable reck-
lessness^n our part if we ^idnToFuselhis opportunity
to clear jyou_out of the^ \vay7*^ Some membeFs of the
Young Turk Committee even showed their hand more
openly by declaring that " all foreigners must disappear
^ from Turkey, first the Armenians, then the Greeks, then
the Jews, and finally the Europeans." One of the
Ministers of State boasted that he would have attained
in three weeks what Abd-ul-Hamid failed to accomplish
in thirty years.

The excuses brought forward in a number of succes-
sive official statements made by the Turkish Govern-
ment for the purpose of stifling the consciences of their
wilfully credulous German Allies are summed up in the
Memorandum. The substance of this summary appears
from the following statement, in which the contrast
between the accusation and the real facts is pointed
out under each head : —

I. One Garo Pasdermadjian, a Russian Armenian,
is vaguely alleged to have joined certain volunteer corps

INTRODUCTION,

in the district of Erzeroum. (All the positiv^e acts
ascribed to him are connected with the doings of the
Russian Armenians.)

2. Two Armenians are alleged to have — on the insti-
gation of the British authorities — caused a train in Cilicia
to go off the rails. (In the Turkish official statement
dated 4th June, 191 5, in which this accusation is made,
a preliminary observation appears, to the effect that the
Armenians "of Cilicia had done no act which could
have disturbed the public peace and order, or could
have necessitated any repressive measures").
/3J The Commanders of English and French war-
ships are accused of having placed themselves in com-
munication with Armenians of Adana, Alexandretta,
and other places on the coast, for the purpose of incit-
ing them to rebellion. (Xo evidence is produced as to
this accusation, and it is not even alleged that the at-
tempt complained of had any success.)

4. The resistance of the Armenians of Zeitoun to
the Turkish authorities is referred to. (The events at
Zeitoun are well known. Turkish Gendarmes had taken
possession of some Armenian young women; twenty
young men had thereupon come to blows with the Gen-
darmes and had barricaded themselves in a monastery
some distance awav from the town. The town was then
surrounded bv soldiers and the whole population of
the town was deported.)

(5j It is made a complaint that four ** Hintchakists '*
were involved in a plot against the Turkish Govern-
ment organized bv the party in opposition. (The plot'
was started in 191 2, and had been discovered before the
outbreak of war. The " Hintchakists " were active as
a revolutionarv Armenian party in the nineties, but in
IQ13 the Turkish Hintchakists repudiated all connec-
tion with anv revolutionarv movement; the four Hint-

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

chakists in question were Egyptian Armenians, and
had been arrested before the outbreak of war.)

6. It is stated that Armenians in Vanj and other
places near the south-eastern corner of Lake Van, had
risen in arms against the Government. (The events in
this district are well-known ; there was no premeditated
resistance; but the violence of the Turkish and Kurdish
soldiers, which caused many inhabitants to cross the
Russian frontier, also caused some occasional acts of
resistance.)

7. The occupation of the Castle Rock at Shabin-
Karahissar by 500 i\rmenians is made another ground
of fcomplaint. (This happened after the town had been
surrounded by soldiers, who had been summoned on
account of the excitement caused in the town by the
execution of a citizen and the threats of deportations.)

The far-fetched character of the justification of the
outrages is laid bare by the analysis given above, which
is a summarised reproduction of the criticism contained
in the German scholar's Memorandum. The old maxim,
"Qui s'excuse s'accuse," is particularly appropriate in
this instance. The deliberate character of the policy of
extermination is only seen with greater distinctness
through the flimsy cloak of pretexts which is intended
to conceal it. The result is described as follows in the
German Memorandum: " What has happened, is an
eviction carried_out on the largest^p^si ble scale^^Kct-
ingij millions of citizens, who by their pertinacity: and
capacity for jwork have ha^ the^reatest_share in_the
development of the economic progress of the country.'*

Some persons in Germany seem to think that the
fate of the Armenians was due to the fact that the con-
tinued co-existence in the same country of races so
antagonistic to one another as the Turkish and
Armenian is impossible in the nature of things; but

INTRODUCTION.

this is most emphatically denied by the author of the
Memorandum, who asserts that in this instance the
Government did not even make use of its favourite
meTFiocI oFinciting one part of the population against
another part, but garriedout its scheme by the sole

"^agency of administrative measures. ~ ^ ^

The author~ornie~^XTeniorarfdum is no doubt himself
actuated entirely by humane and high-minded feelings,
and the very fact of his taking such a very strong atti-
tude on the Armenian question reveals an amount of
courage which calls for unqualified admiration ; but he
evidently knows that manv of his countrymen require
more tangible inducements for abandoning their cal-
lous or hostile attitude on the Armenian question. He
therefore calls attention to the serious loss which not
only Turkish economic life but also German trade in-
terests will suffer, if the extermination of the Armenians
is to be carried to the bitter end. He shows that the
Turks are absolutelv without any talent for trade and

industry, and that the legend about the dishonest\'_pf
the .^^rmenians and Greeks a^sopposedjo^he honesty of
the 'Furks has no foundation in fact of an\^sort. He

says that many German merchants are under the impres-
sion that their customers in Turkey are Turks, while
in reality they are Armenians, Greeks^ or J^\vs. The
Greeks apparently are chiefly concern»'d with export
trade, while the import trade is mainly in the hands of
Armenian merchants. The German exporters, who give
longer credits than others, are of course interested in the
solvency of their customers, but many of them are ignor-
ant of their nationality, and — starting from the notion
that everyone who wears a fez is of Turkish nationality
— they think that they are dealing with Turks. These
exporters w'ill have a rude awakening when_the true
facts become known to them. The Memorandum, by

I I

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

way of illustration, mentions one firm of importers in
Constantinople who sell goods to 378 customers residing
in 42 towns in the interior. The total amount owing
by these customers at the date when the information
was given, was nearly £14,000, which sum had to be
written off as lost, as all the 378 debtors, with their
employees and with their goods, have vanished; they
are either dead or wander about as beggars on the
borders of the Arabian desert.

During the Balkan war some members of the Young
Turk Committee tried to_damage the tmde of the Arme-
nians and_pf the Greeks by means of a boycott, which
was puTTnto operatioiTwirh the aid of the Government.
The rural population, which was in this way compelled
to make their purchases in Turkish shops only, obtained
bad goods at increased prices, and returned to the Arme-
nians and Greeks as soon as the boycott was raised.

The Memorandum quotes a report, dated 15th August,
1915, and made by the American Consul at Aleppo,
which sums up the result of the deportations of the
Armenians in the following passage: —

"As go per cent, of the trade into the interior is in
the hands of the Armenians, the result is that the coun-
try has to face economic ruin. As the greater part of
the commercial transactions are credit transactions, hun-
dreds of business men of high standing, though not
themselves Armenians, have to face bankruptcy. In
the evacuated localities, barring a few exceptions, there
will not be a single mason, smith, tailor, carpenter,
potter, tentmaker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, chemist,
doctor, lawyer, or any other person engaged in trade
or in a profession ; the country will, in fact, be in a help-
less position."

The author of the Memorandum winds up the section

INTRODUCTIOX.

relating to the effect of the deportations on Turkish trade
with the following passage : —

" The popularity of the — otherwise unpopular — war
may have been temporarily increased with the Turkish
populace by the annihilation and spoliation of the non-
Mohammedan population, more particularly of the
Armenians, but partly also of the Syrians, the Greeks,
the Maronites, and the Jews; but the more thoughtful
Mohammedans will, on perceiving the net result of the
damage suffered by their country, regretfully lament
the economic ruin of Turkey, and come to the conclu-
sion that the Turkish Government has lost incompar-
ably more by the internal warfare than it can ever gain
by external victories."

As regards the ''moral consequences" of the Arme-
nian massacres, the German scholar says that they will
not be properly felt till after the end of the war. He
means by that, that the civilized world will then wake
up to the horrors of the deeds which have been perpe-
trated bv the Turkish Government. He continues : "The
world will not allow itself to be persuaded by the conten-
tion that strategical considerations had required the
deportation of half a million of women and children,
wholesale conversions to the Mohammedan faith, and
the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of defence-
less persons."

The German scholar's Memorandum, for obvious
reasons, is very silent as to the moral responsibility
of the German Government for the deeds which rouse
his indignation, but several of his countrymen are more
outspoken. In this respect some of the documents in-
cluded in this pamphlet are very instructive.

The German whose experiences are recorded in Docu-
ment 9 reports that a Turkish official said to him:
"This time Germany has given these unbelieving swine

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

a lesson which they will not forget." (See below, p. 66.)
At Arab Pounar a Turkish major addressed him in the fol-
lowing language : ' 'I and my brother took possession of a
young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been left on the road.j/
We are very angry with the Germans for doing such
Jjifngs." When challenged on this point the Turks
replied: "The chief of" the General Staff is a German;
von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so many
German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not ^
permit such treatment as the Armenians have to suffer
now." (See p. 79.) In Nuss Tell a Mohammedan
mspector made a similar remark, and when asked to
explain himself he replied: "It is not only I who say
this; everyone will tell you the same tale." (See p. 79.)
Document No. 12, which voices the indignation of a
German teacher in a German secondary school in Tur-
key, is also of peculiar interest. The following pas-
sages deserve special notice: — " We deem it our duty
to call attention to the fact that our educational work will
lose its moral foundation and the esteem of the natives,
if the German Government is not in a position to pre-
vent the brutality with which the wives and children of
slaughtered Armenians are treated in this place/^_(See
p. 95.) ^^*~Ta~alim el aleman ' ('that is the teaching
of the Germans ') says the simple Turk, when asked
ibout the authors of these measures. The educated
'oslems are convinced that, though the German people
lay disapprove of such horrors, the German Govern-
lent is taking no steps to prevent them, out of consider-
ition for its Turkish allies. Mohammedans of more
refined feelings, Turks as well as Arabs, shake their
heads disapprovingly; they do not even conceal their
tears, when, in the passage of a convoy of deported
Armenians through the town, they see Tiirldsh^soldiers
inflicting blows with heavy sticks on women in advanced

INTRODUCTION,

pregnancy or dyrngjDersons who cannot drag themselves
anyTurther. They cannot imag^ine that their Govern-
ment has ordered these crueUies, ajid asc r i be al 1 excesses y
to the guih of the. Germans; who during the war are "^
Hel^oBeThe teachers of the Turks in all matters. Even
the ]\Iollahs declare in the MQsqu.es that it was not the
Sublime Porte but the German officers who had ordered
the ill-treatmen_^ arTd anhThilation of the Armenians.
The things which in this place have been before every-
body's eyes during many months must indeed remain
a blot on Germany's shield of honour in the memory .y
oTTJr i e n t a l~~n atTb n s 7^' ^S ee pp. 96-97.) ** Nothing
w^ould be more humiliating for us than the erection
of a costly palace at Constantinople commemorating
German-Turkish friendship, whjje^we are iinable to pro-
tect our fellow-CJiristians from barbaritjes unparalleled
'even m the blood-stained history of Turkey." (See
p.~l"o5.)

The author of the document considers it "out of the
question that the German Government, if it were seri-
ously inclined to stem the tide of destruction even at
this eleventh hour, could find it impossible to bring
the Turkish Government to reason." He proceeds as
follows: "If the Turks are really so well disposed to
us Germans as people say, then it is surely permissible
to show them to what an extent they ( ompromise us
before the whole civilised world, if we, as their Allies,
are to look on calmly, when hundreds of thousands of
our fellow-Christians in Turkey are slaughtered, when
their wives and daughters are violated, and their chil-
dren brought up in the faith of Islam." (See p. 105.)
He concludes his report with the following peroration :
"We mav indignantly repudiate the lies circulated
in enemv countries accusing tlic (lerman Consuls of
having organized the massacres. We shall not, how-

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

ever, destroy the belief of the Turkish people that
Germany has ordered the Armenian massacres unless
energetic action be at last taken by German diplomatists
and German officers."

More than a year has elapsed since the appeal was
issued, but the rulers of Germany apparently are more
inclined to act on Count Reventlow's suggestion,
according to which "the Armenians least of all deserve
the pity and the compassionate emotions of the civilized
world," than to listen to an eye-witness w^hose concep-
tions as to the true mission of German culture differ so
widely from the ideas which, to the disgrace and mis-
fortune of his country, have of late characterised Ger-
man political aims and German methods of warfare.

A. THE INVASION OF PERSIA.

1. LETTERS FROM GERMAN MISSIONARIES
IN N.W. PERSIA.

(a)

The Russians had hardly gone when the Mohamme-
dans began to rob and to pillage. Window-frames,
doors, staircases, woodwork, everything was taken away.
Many Syrians had abandoned the whole of their house-
hold goods and the stores accumulated for the winter,
and had fled. Everything fell into the enemy's hands.
Flight was the best expedient; for those who were left
behind had a sad fate. Fifteen thousand Syrians
found protection within the walls of the Mission
Station, and were provided with bread by the mis-
sionaries. One lavasch (a thin water biscuit) was
each person's daily ration. Sickness broke out; the
death rate mounted up to fifty a day. In the villages
the Kurds killed nearly everv man who came into their
power. During six weeks a Turkish soldier guarded
us. The fact that I was horn in Germany ivas very
helpful; nobody even touched us*

* The italics are the Editor's.
17

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

Am I to report how the Turks had erected gallows
on the main road outside the town gates and had
hanged many innocent Syrians and shot others, who-
previously had been detained a long time in prison?
I will be silent as to all these horrible things. Like
many other Armenian soldiers, one was beaten to death
here outside the gate and buried close to Miss Friede-
mann's wall, but so carelessly that the dogs were able
to disinter part of the corpse. One of the hands was
quite uncovered. I took a few spades and we heaped
a mound over him. Miss Friedemann's garden, the pro-
perty of the German Orient Mission, was destroyed by
the Mohammedans and some of the houses were set
on fire. We gladly welcomed the first Cossacks, wha
appeared again after five months. Now we feel once
more that our life is safe and that it is unnecessary to
keep the gates locked during the day-time.

(b)

The latest reports tell us that 4,000 Syrians and lOQ
Armenians who were here with the [American] mission-
aries [in Urmia] died of sickness alone. All the sur-
rounding villages have been plundered and burnt down,
more particularly Goktepe, Giilpashan, and Ichar-
guscha. Two thousand Christians have been massacred
in Urmia and the surrounding country; many churches
have been destroyed and burnt; also many houses in
the town.

(c)

Sautchbulak was razed to the ground by the Turks.
Gallows were erected for the missionaries, but help
came and prevented the worst. A lady missionary and
a doctor have died.

THE IX V AS I OX OF PERSIA.

(d)

Jn Haftevan and Salnias 850 corpses were found in
the wells and cisterns alone, all headless. Why? The
Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish troops had promised
a sum of money for every Christian head. The wells are
drenched with the blood of Christians. From Haftevan
alone 500 women and girls were handed over to the
Kurds in Sautchbulak. In Diliman crowds of Chris-
tians were locked up and forced to become Moham-
medans. The males were circumcised. Giilpashan, the
richest village in the district of Urmia, has been razed
to the ground. The men were killed, the prettv girls
and women carried off. The same fate befel Babaru.
Hundreds of women threw thernseK-es^i^nto the^ depths
of the river when they saw so manv of their sisters
being violated in the streets in broad daylight; the same
happened in Miandoab in the district of Sulduz. The
soldiers who passed through from Sautchbulak carried
the ^Russian Consul's head_on a bayonet-point into
Maragha. Forty Syrians were hanged on the gallows
erected in the Catholic Mission Station at Fath-Ali-
Han-Gol. The nuns had run i n to _t he street and prayed
for pity, but in vain. In Salmas in Khosrova their
whole station has been destroyed; the nuns have fled.
Maragha is destroyed. In Tabriz things are not quite
so bad; 1,175 Christians were massacred in Salmas,
2,000 in the district of Urmia. Of those who had
taken refuge with the missionaries j., 100 died of
typhus. The whole number of the refugees, including
those from Tergavar, \'an, and Azerbaijan, is esti-
mated at 300,000. In Etchmiadzin a committee was
formed for the purpose of taking care of the poor people.
Over 500 children were found on the roads over which
the refugees had come, some only nine days old. Alto-
gether over 3,000 orphans wefeTolt^cIed at Etchmiadzin.

B. THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS.

2. VAN AFTER THE TURKISH RETREAT.

Letter from Herr Sporri, of the German Mission
at \'an, published in the German Journal,
*' Sonnenaufgang," October, 1915.

There lies Artamid before us, adorned by its charming
gardens; but how does the village look? The greater
part of it is nothing now but a heap of ruins. We talked
there with three of our former orphan protegees, who
had had fearful experiences during the recent events.
We rode on across the mountain of Artamid. Even in
time of peace one crosses the pass with one's heart in
one's mouth, because the Kurds ply their robber trade
there. Now it is all uncannily still. Our glance swept
over the magnificent valley of Haiotz-Tzor. There lay
Antananz before us, now utterly destroyed like the rest.
We gave shelter, at the time, to people from Anta-
nanz who had managed to escape. Further on in the
magnificent green landscape lay Vostan. At first sight
one might call it a paradise, but during these latter days
it has also been a hell. What rivers of blood must have
flowed there; it was one of the chief strongholds of the
armed Kurds. At the foot of the mountain we came to
Angegh. There again there were many houses destroyed.
We found here a young woman who, after many years
of widowhood, had married a native of the village.
Things had been going well with her; now her hus-

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

band, too, was slaughtered. One hundred and thirty
people are said to have been murderea tnus. VvepitctTed
our camp here in face of the blackened ruins. Straight
in front of us stood an " amrodz, " a tower built of cakes
of dung — a common enough sight in these parts. We
were told that the Kurds had burnt the corpses of the
slaughtered Armenians in it. Horrible! And yet that
is at least better than if the corpses of the slain, as has
happened in other places, are allowed to lie for an in-
definite period unburied, so that they are devoured by
dogs and poison the air. There we were met by some
soldiers; they were Armenian "Volunteers" who had
come from Russia and were now fighting on the side
of the Russians for the liberation of their Haiasdan.
They were coming now from the neighbourhood of
Bitlis, where heavy fighting was in progress. They
had brought some sick back to the town, and proposed
to rest here awhile. After that we rode on to Ten, where
people we already knew came out to meet us from the
village and informed us of what had happened there.
There, too, the scenes of our former activity, the school
and the church, lay in ruins, and many dwelling houses
as well. The man who used to put us up was also among
the slain ; his widow is still quite distraught. Here about
150 are said to have been murdered. There were so
many orphans in the place, they said to us : — should we
now be inclined to take charge of any again ? We were
unable to give them any definite answer. As we rode
on and on over the mountains, the splendid air did us
much good and we thanked God for it, for little by little
we have come to be in sore need of recuperation. We
had a wonderful view from the mountain heights, but
everywhere in the villages one sees blackened and ruined
houses.

3. MOUSH.

Statement by a German Eye-witness of Occurrences
at Moush. Communicated by the American
Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief.

Towards the end of October (1914), when the Turkish
war bee^an, the Turkish officials started to take every-
thing they needed for the war from the Armenians.
Their 'gTRjds, ilreir money, all waY couFscated. LateF
on, every Turk was free to go to an Arrnenian shop
and take out what he needed or thought he would like to
have. Only a tenth perhaps was really for the war, the
rest was pure robbery. It was necessary to have food,
etc., carried to the front, on the Caucasian frontier. For
this purpose the CfOvernment sent out about 300 old
Armenian men, many cripples amongst them, and boys
not more than twelve years old, to carry the goods — a
three weeks' journey from Moush to the Russian fron-
tier. As every individual Armenian was robbed of every-
thing he ever had, these poor people soon died of hunger
and cold on the way. They had no clothes at all, for
even these were stolen on the way. If out of these 300
Armenians thirty or forty returned, it was a marvel; the
rest were either beaten to death or died from the causes
stated above.

The winter was most severe in Moush ; the gendarmes
were sent to levy high taxes, and as the Armenians had

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

already given everything to the Turlvs, and were there-
fore powerless to pay these enormous taxes, they were
beaten to death. The Armenians never defended them-
seTves~"excepr^^hen they saw the gendarmes ill-treating
their wives and children, and the result in such cases
was that the whole village was burnt down, merely
because a few Armenians had tried to protect their
families.

Toward the middle of April we heard rumours that
there were great disturbances in Van. We have heard
statements both from Turks and from Armenians, and
as these reports agree in every respect, it is quite plain
that there is some truth in them. They state that the
Ottoman Government sent orders that all iVrmenians
were to give up their arms, which the Armenians refused
to do on the ground that thc)^ required their arms in
case of necessity. This caused a regular massacre. All
villages inhabited by Armenians were burnt down. The
Turks boasted of having now got rid of all the Arme-
nians. I heard it from the officers myself, how they
revelled in the thought that the Armenians had been
got rid of.

Thus the winter passed, with things happening every
day more terrible than one can possibly describe. We
then heard that massacres had started in Bitlis. In
Moush everything was being prepared for one, when
the Russians arrived at Liz, which is about 14 to 16
hours* journey from Moush. This occupied the atten-
tion of the Turks, so that the massacre was put off for
the time being. Hardly had the Russians left Liz,
however, when all the districts inhabited by Armenians
were pillaged and destroyed.

This was- in the month of May. At the beginning
of June, we heard that the whole Armenian population
of Bitlis had been got rid of. It was at this time that

THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS,

we received news that the American missionary, Dr.
Knapp, had been wounded in an Armenian house and
that the Turkish Government had sent him to Diyar-
bekir. The very first night in Diyarbekir he died, and
the Government explained his death as a result of having
overeaten, which of course nobody believed.

When there was no one left in Bitlis to massacre, their
attention was diverted to Moush. Cruelties had already
been committed, but so far not too publicly; now% how-
ever, they started to shoot people down without any
cause, and beat them to^eatlT^simply for the pleasure
of doing so. In AlousTiitself, which is a big town, there
are 25,ck)0 Armenians; in the neighbourhood there are
300 villages, each containing about 500 houses. In all
these not a single male Armenian is now to be seen,
and hardly a woman either, except for a few here and
there.

In the first week of Julv 20,000 soldiers arrived from
Constantinople by way of Harpout with munitions and
eleven guns, and laid siege to Moush. As a matter of
fact, the town had already been beleaguered since the
middle of June. At this stage the Mutessarif gave orders
that we should leave the tow n and go to Harpout. We
pleaded with him to let us stay, for w^e had in our charge
all the orphans and patients; but he was angry, and
threatened to remove us by force if we did not do as
instructed. As we both fell sick, however, we were
allowed to remain at Moush. I received permission, in
the event of our leaving Moush, to take the Armenians
of our orphanage with us; but when we asked for assur-
ances of their safety, his only reply was: "You can
take them with you, but being Armenians^ their heads
may and will be cut off on tjie way/'
"^ On the loth Julv Moush was bombarded for several
hours, on the pretext that some Armenians had tried

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

to escape. I went to see the Mutessarif, and asked him
to protect our buildings. His reply was : "It serves you
right for staying, instead of leaving as instructed. The
guns are here to make an end of Moush. Take refuge
with the Turks." This, of course, was impossible, as
we could not leave our charges. Next day a new order
was promulgated for the expulsion of the Armenians,
^nd three days' grace was given them to make ready.
They were told to register themselves at the Govern-
ment Building before they left. Their families could
remain, but their property and their money were to be
confiscated. The Armenians were unable to go, for they
had no money to defray the journey, and they preferred
to die in their houses rather than be separated from their
families and endure a lingering death on the road.

As stated above, three days' grace was given to the
Armenians, but two hours had scarcely elapsed when
the soldiers began breaking into the houses, arresting
the inmates and throwing them into prison. The guns
began to fire, and thus the people were effectually pre-
vented from registering themselves at the Government
Building. We all had to take refuge in the cellar for
fear of our orphanage catching fire. It was heartrending
to hear the cries of the people and children who were
being burnt to death in their houses. The soldiers took
great delight in hearing them, and when people who
were out in the street during the bombardment fell dead,
the soldiers merely laughed at them.

The survivors were sent to Ourfa (there were none left
but sick women and children); I went to the Mutessarif
and begged him to have mercy on the children at least,
but in vain. He replied that the Armernan^ children
must perish wiTfTtheir nation rTArToilr "people were taken
fronTouFTTos'pitai and oFphanage; they left us three
female servants. Under these atrocious circumstances

/ 26

THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS,

Moush was burnt to the ground. Every officer boasted

of the number he had personally massacred as his share
-■ ^ — ■ — i* -

in ridding Turkey of the Armenian race.

We left for Harpout. Harpout has become the ceme-
tery of the Armenians; from all directions they have been
brought to Harpout to be buried. There they lie, and
the dogs and the vultures devour their bodies. Xow and
then some man throws some earth over the bodies. In -v
Harpout and Mezre the people have had to endure terri- I
ble tortures. They have had their eye-brows plucked i
out, their breasts cut off, their nails torn off; their tor- \
turers hew off their feet or else hammer nails into them
just as they do in shoeing horses. This is all done at
night time, and in order that the people mav not hear
their screams and know of their agony, soldiers are
stationed round the prisons, beating drums and blow-
ing whistles. It is needless to relate that many died
of these tortures. When they die, the soldiers cry :
** Xow let your Christ help you."

One old priest was tortured so cruelly to extract a
confession that, believing that the torture would cease
and that he would be left alone if he did it, he cried
out in his desperation : " We are revolutionists." He
expected his tortures to cease, but on the contrary the
soldiers cried: " What further do we seek? We have
il here from his own lips." And instead of picking
their victims as they did before, the officials had all
the Armenians tortured without sparing a soul.

Early in July 2,000 Armenian soldiers were ordered
to leave for Aleppo to build roads. The people of Har-
pout were terrified on hearing this, and a panic started
in the town. The \'ali sent for the (ierman missionary,
Mr. Ehemann, and begged him to Cjuiet tiie people, re-
peating over and over again that no harm whatever would

GJcILUA.yy, TURKF.Y AND ARMENIA,

befall these soldiers. Mr. Ehemann took the Vali's word
and quieted the people. But they had scarcely left when
we heard that they had all been murdered and thrown
into a cave. Just a few iTianaged^tcTescape, arTdTwe got
the reports from them. Jt was useless to protest to the
Vali. The American Consul at Harpout protested
several times, but the Vali makes no account of him,
and treats him in a most shameful manner. A few days
later another 2,000 Armenian soldiers were despatched
via Diyarbekir, and, in order to hinder them the more
surely from escaping, they were left to starve on tne
way, so that they had no strength left in them to flee.
Hie Kurds were given notice that the Armenians were
on the way, and the Kurdish women came with their
butcher's knives to help the men. In Mezre a public
brothel was erected for the Turks, and all the beautiful
Armenian girls and women vere placed there. At nig'ht
the 1 urks were allowed free entrance. The permission
for tlie Protestant and Latholic Armenians to be ex-
empted from deportation oniv arrived after their depor-
tation had taken place. The Government wanted to
force the few- remaining Armenians to accept the Moham-
medan faith. A few did so in order to save their wives
and children from the terrible sufferings already wit-
nessed in the case of others. The people begged us to
leave for Constantinople and obtain some security for
them. On our Avav to Constantinople we only encoun-
tered old women. Xo voung women or girls were to be
sef'n.

Already by November* we had known that there would
be a massacre. The Mutessarif of INIoush, who was a
very intimate friend of Enver Pasha, declared quite
openly that they VvOuld massacre the Armenians at the

* I0T4-

THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS.

first opportune moment jind exterminate the whole race.
BeforelEe Russians arrived they intended first to butcher
the Armenians, and then fight the Russians afterwards.
Towards the beginning of April, in the presence of a
Major Lange and several other high officials, including
the American and German Consuls, Kkrrn [^ev quite
openlv declared the Government's intention of exter-
minating the Armenian race, ^jj^ these details plainly
show that the massacre was deliberately planned.

In a few villages destitute women come begging,
naked and sick, for alms and protection. \\> are not
allowed to give them anything, we -ire not allov/ed to
take them in, in fact we are forbidden to do anvthing
for them, and they die outside. If onlv permission
could be obtained from the autiiorities to help them !
If we cannot endure the sight of these poor people's
sufferings, what must it be like for tlie sufferers them-
selves ?

It is a storv written in blood. Two old missionaries
and a younger lady (an American) were sent awav from
Mardin. They were treated just lik'e prisoners, dogged
continually by the gendarmes, and were brought in tJiis
fashion to Sivas. For missionaries of that age a jour:iev
of this kind in the present circumstances was obviousiv
a terrible hardship.

2(J

4. ERZINDJAN.

Statement by two Danish Red Gross Nurses, formerly
in the service of the German Military Mission
at Erzeroum.* Gommunicated by a Swiss
Gentleman of Geneva.

In March, 1915, we learnt through an Armenian
doctor, who died later on of typhoid, that the Turkish
Government was preparing for a massacre on a grand
scale. He begged us to find out from General Passelt
w'hether the rumour was true. We heard afterwards
that the General (a gallant officer) had his own fears of
it, and asked, for that reason, to be relieved of his post.
. We fell sick of typhoid and .... in con-
sequence of a number of changes in the hospital staff
. . . . we were obliged to leave Erzeroum. Through
the good offices of the German Consul at Erzeroum,
who also possessed the confidence of the Armenians,
we were engaged by the Red Cross at Erzindjan, and
worked there seven w'eeks.

At the beginning of June, the head of the Red Cross
Mission at Erzifidjan, Staff-Surgeon A., told us that the
Armenians had revolted at Van, that measures had been

* They were ;it work in the German hospital at Erzeroum from
October, 1014, to April, 1915. — Editor.

THE SIX ARM EX I AN VILAYETS.

taken against them which would be put into general
execution, and that the whole Armenian population of
Erzindjan and the neighbourhood would be transported
to Mesopotamia, where it would no longer find itself
in a majority. There w^as, however, to be no massacre,
and measures were to be taken to feed the exiles and to
secure their personal safety by a military escort. Wagons
loaded with arms and bombs were reported, he said, to
have been discovered at Erzindjan, and many arrests
were to be made. The Red Cross staff were forbidden
to have any relations with the exiles, and prohibited any
excursions on foot or horseback beyond a certain radius.

After that, several days' grace was given to the popu-
lation of Erzindjan for the sale of their property, which
was naturally realised at ludicrous prices. In the first
week of June,t the first convoy started; the rich people
were allowed to hire carriages. They were to go to
Harpout. The three succeeding days, further deporta-
tions followed;! many children were taken charge of
by Moslem families; later on, the authorities decided
that these children must go into exile as well.

The families of the Armenians employed in our hos-
pital had to go with the rest, including a woman who
was ill. A protest from Dr. Xeukirch, who was attend-
ing her, had no effect except to postpone her departure
two days. A soldier attached to our slaff as cobbler said
to Sister B.*: *T am now forty-six years old, and yet I

t 7th June : All^emcine Missions-Zeitschrift. November, iQ^S-
X Amounting- to about 20,000 — 25,000 people in all : Allii>^mcine
MissioHs-ZcitscJiriff. November, igis.

* One of the two authors of the present statement, which has
been drafted in the first person by the other witness, bu* repre-
sents the experience of both. The Editor is in possession of the
drafter's name, but does not know the identity of Sister B.. Dr.
A., or Mr. G. — Editor,

■;i

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

am taken for military service, although I have paid
my exemption-tax regularly every year. I have never
done anything against the Government, and now they
are taking from me my whole family, my seventy-year-
old mother, my wife and five children, and I do not know
where they are going." He was especially affected by
the thought of his little daughter, a year and a half old;
" She is so sweet. She has such pretty eves " ; he wept
like a child. The next dav he came back; "I know
the truth. They are all dead." And it was onlv too
true. Our Turkish cook came to us crying, and told
us how the Kurds had attacked the unhappy convov at
Kamakh Boghaz,t had pillaged it completely, and had
killed a great number of the exiles. This must have
been the 14th June.

Two young Armenian teachers, educated at the Col-
lege of Harpout, whose lives were spared, related that
the convoy had been caught under a cross-fire bv the
Kurds en the flanks and the Turkish irregulars in the
rear. They had thrown themselves flat on the ground
and pretended to be dead; afterwards they succeeded in
finding their way back to Erzindjan by circuitous paths,
bribing some Kurds whom they met on the wav. One
of them had with her her fiance in woman's clothes.
He had been shielded by a Turkish class-mate. When
they reached Erzindjan a gendarme tried to abduct the
girl, and her fiance interfered. He was killed, and the
girls were carried off to Turkish houses, where they were
treated kindly, but had pressure put upon them to change
their religion. They conveyed this news to us through
a young doctor who attended some Armenian patients in

t A defile. 12 hours' journey from Erzindjan, where the
iCunhrates flows through a narrow gorg-e between two walls of
rock.

.12

THE SIX ARM EX 1 AX VILAVETS.

our hospital, and was thereby enabled to get into touch
with us; he brought us an appeal from them to take them
with us to Harpout. If only they had poison, thev said,
they would poison themselves. I'hev had no informa-
tion whatever as to ihe fate of their companions.

The day after,i Friday, the iith June, a party of
regular troops (belonging to the 86th Cavalry Brigade)
were sent out "to keep the Kurds in order."

We heard subsequently from these soldiers how the
defenceless Armenians had been massacred to the last
oim 1 he butchery had taken tour hours. The women
tlTrew themselves on their knees, thev had thrown their
children into the Euphrates, and so on.* "It was hor-
rible,'' said a nice-looking young soldier; " I could not
fire, I only pretended." For that matter, we have often
heard Turks express their disapproxal and their pity.
' The soldiers told us that there were ox-carls all ready
to carry the corpses to the river and remove everv trace
of the massacre. t

Next dav there was a regular battue through the corn-
fields. (The corn was then standing, and manv Arme-
nians held hidden in it.)

t i.e., after the ricpartiire of the h\st convoys of exrle.s from
Erzindjan doth June), not after the narrators were informed of
the massacres by their cook and by the two Armenian firirls. The
ppssaftes about the cobbler, the cook, and the two g'irls are evi-
dently in parenthesis, and interrupt the sequence of the narra-
tive.— Editor.

* The further dft-'ils are j^ivt n in the Alli^rtyu ir.c M>ssiun.<'
Z'.'it'^clirift . November, 1915 : "When we exclaimed in horror
'So you fire on women and children I' the soldiers answered
* What could we do? It was our orders,' One of them .Klded
*It WPS a heart-breaking' siffht. For that matter, I did not
shoot.' "-Editor.

t On the e\enin;f of the nth. we saw soldiers retrrninr to
town laden wirh loot. We heard from both Turks .'»nd Arn.enijins
that children's corpses were strewn along: the road.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

From that time on, convoys of exiles were continually
arriving, all on their way to the slaughter; we have no
doubt about their fate, after the unanimous testimony
which we have received from many different quarters.
Later, our Greek driver told us that diejdcdmsji^dd^
hands_tied behind their backs, and were thrown down
Trom the cliffs into_the nver.'^^IlilslTrelhog'was'e^
when the numbers were too great to dispose of them in
any other fashion. It was also easier work for the mur-
derers. Sister B. and I, of course, began at once to
think what we could do, and w^e decided to travel with
one of these convoys to Harpout. We did not know yet
that the massacre on the road had been ordered by the
Government, and we also thought that we could check
the brutality of the gendarmes and stave ofT the assaults
of the Kurds, since we speak Kurdish and have some
influence over the tribesmen..

We then telegraphed to the Consul at Erzeroum, tell-
ing him that we had been dismissed from the hospital,
and urging him, in the interests of Germany, to come
to Erzindjan. He wired back: "Impossible to leave
my post. Wait for Austrians, who are due to pass here
the 22nd June."

On the evening of the 17th June, we went out for a
walk with Mr. C., the druggist of the Red Cross
Staff. He was as much horrified as we were at the
cruelties that were being perpetrated. . . . On
our walk we met a gendarme, who told us that, ten
minutes' distance away, a large convoy of exiles from
Baibourt had halted. He narrated to us, with appalling
vividness, how one by one the^menhad been massacred
and cast into the depths of the gorge.t ~^

X Every day ten or twelve m^n had boon Villed and thrown into
the ravines. — AU^cmeiyic Missions-Zeitschrift.

THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS,

He told how, at each village, the women had been
violated; how he himself had desired to take a girl, but
had been told that already she was no longer a maid;
how children had had their brains battered out when

they cried or hindered the majch. *' There were the
naked bodies of three girls; I buried them to do a good
deed," was the remark with which he concluded his
story.

The following morning, at a very earlv hour, we heard
the procession of exiles passing in front of our house,
along the high road leading in to Erzindjan. We followed
them and kept u|} with them as far as the to'wn, about
an hour's walk. Mr. d. came with us. It was a very
large gang — only two or three of them men, all the rest
women and children. Manv of the women looked de-
mented. They cried out: '' Spare us, we will become
Moslems or Germans or whatever you will ; onlv spare
us. \\^eare being taken to Kamakh Boghaz to have our
throats cut, and they made an expressne gesture.
Others~T<ept silence, and marched patientlv on with a
few bundles on their backs and their children in their
arms. Others begged us to save their children. Many
Turks arrived on the scene to carry off children and girls,
with or without their parents' consent. There was no
time for reflection, for tlie crowd was being mo\rd f*n
continually by the mounted gendarmes brandishing their
whips. On the outskirts of the town, the road lo Kamrkh
Boghaz branches of!" from the main highway. At this
point the scene turned into a regular slave market ; for
our part, we took a family of six children, from three to
fourteen years old, who clutched hold of us, and another
little girl as well. \\^^ entrusted the latter to our Turkish
cook, who was on the spot. She wanted to take the child
to the kitchen of Dr. A.'s private house, and keep her
there until we could come and fetch her; but the doctor's

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

adjutant, Riza Bey, gave the woman a beating and
threw the child out into the street. Meanwhile, with
cries of agony, the gang of sufferers continued its
march, while we returned to the hospital with our six
ciiildren. Dr. P^, gave us permission to keep them in
our room until we had packed our belongings; they were
given food and soon became calmer. " Now we are
saved," they had cried when we took them. They
refused to let go of our hands. The smallest, the son
oi a rich citizen of Baibourt, lay huddled up in his
mother's cloak ; his face was swollen with crying and
he seemed inconsolable. Once he rushed to the window
and pointed to a gendarme: "That's the man who
killed my father." The children handed over to us
their money, 475 piastres (about £4), which their parents
had given them with the idea that the children would
not be searched.

We then rode into the town to obtain permission for
these children to travel with us. We were told that the
high authorities were in session to decide the fate of the
convoy which had just arrived. Nevertheless, Sister B.
succeeded in getting word with someone she knew, who
gave her the authorisation to take the children with her,
and offered to give them false names in the passport.
This satisfied us, and, after returning to the hospital,
we left the same e^•ening with baggage and children and
all, and installed ourselves in a hotel at Erzindjan. The
Turkish orderlies at the hospital were very friendly, and
said : " You have done a good deed in taking these chil-
dren." We could get nothing but one small room for the
eight of us. During the night there was a frightful
knocking at our door, and we were asked whether there
were two German ladies in the room. Then all became
quiet again, to the great relief of our little ones. Their
first question had been, would we prevent them from

THE SIX AR2IE.\IAX VILAYETS,

being made Mohammedans? And was our cross (the
nurses' Red Cross) the same as theirs? After that they
were comforted. We left them in the room, and went
ourselves to take our tea in the hotel cafe. We noticed
that some discharged hospital patients of ours, who had
always shown themselves full of gratitude towards us,
behaved as if thcv no longer recognised us. The pro-
prietor of the hotel began to hold forth, and everyone
listened to what he was saying: "The death of these
women and children has been decreed at Constantin-
ople." The Hodja (Turkish priest) of our hospital came
in, too, and said to us, among other things: " If God
has no pity on them, why must you have pity ? The
Armenians have committed atrocities at Van. That hap-
pened because their religion is ekzik (inferior). 'F^he
Moslems should not have followed their example, but
should have carried out the massacre with greater
humanity." We always gave the same answer — that
they ought to discover the guilty and do justice upon
them, but that the massacre of women and children was,
and always will remain, a crime.

Then we went to the Mutessarif himself, with whom
we had not succeeded in obtaining an interview before.
The man looked like the devil incarnate, and his beha-
viour bore out his appearance. In a bellowing voice
he shouted at us : " Women have no business to meddle
with politics, but ought to respect the Government!"
We told him that we should have acted in precisely the
same way if the victims liad been Mohammedans, and
that politics had nothing to do with our conduct. He
answered that we had been expelled from the hospital,
and that we should i^vX the same treatment from him;
that he would not stand us, and that he would certainly
not permit us to go to Harpout to fetch our belongings,
but would send us to Sivas. Worst of all, he forbade

GEIUIANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

us to take the children away, and at once sent a gen-
darme to carry them off from our room.

On our way back to the hotel we actually met them,
but they were hurried past us so quickly that we had
not even a chance to return them their money. After-
wards we asked Dr. Lindenberg to see that this money
was restored to them ; but, to find out where they were,
he had to make enquiries of a Turkish officer, and just
at the moment of our departure, when we had been told
that they had already been killed, and when we had no
longer any chance ot leaking aTurther search for them,
the aforementioned Riza Bey came and asked us for this
money, on the ground that he wanted to return it to the
children ! We had already decided to spend it on reliev-
ing other Armenians.

At Erzindjan we were now looked askance at. They
would no longer let us stay at the hotel, but took us to
a deserted Armenian house. The whole of this exten-
sive quarter of the town seemed dead. People came and
went at will to loot the contents of the houses; in some
of the houses the families of Moslem refugees were
already installed. We had now a roof over our heads,
but no one would go to get us food. How^ever, we man-
aged to send a note to Dr. A., who kindly allowed us
to return to the hospital. The following day the Mutes-
sarif sent a springless baggage cart, in which we were
to do the seven days' journey to Sivas. We gave him
to understand that we would not have the conveyance,
and, upon the representations of Dr. A., they sent us
a travelling carriage, with the threat to have us arrested
if we did not start at once. This was on Monday, the
2 1 St June, and we should have liked to wait for the
Austrians, who were due to arrive on the Tuesday morn-
ing, and continue the journey in their company; but
Dr. A. declared that he could no longer give us pro-

THE SIX ARMEXIAX VILAYETS.

tection, and so we started out. Dr. Lindenberg- did us
the kindness of escorting us as far as Rifahia.* During
the first days of our journey we saw fi\e corpses. One
was a woman's, and still had clothes on; the others
were naked, one of them headless. There were two
Turkish officers on the road with us who were really
Armenians, as we were told by the gendarme attached
to us. They preserved their incognito towards us, and
maintained a very great reserve, but alwavs took care
not to get separated from us. On the fourth day they
did not put in an appearance. \\'lien we enquired after
them, we were given to understand that the less we con-
cerned ourselves about them the betKT it would be for
us. On the road, we broke our journev near a Greek
village. A savage-looking man was standing b\' the
roadside. He began to talk with us, and told us he was
stationed there to kill all the .Armenians that passed, ajid
that he had already killed 250. He <'xplained that they
all deserved their fate, for they were all Anarchists —
not Liberals or Socialists, but Anarchists. He told the-
gendarmes that l]e_had recei\x-d orders^by telejphone to
kill our two tra\clling companjons. So these two men
with their ArmenTarf drivers must have perished there*
We could not restrain ourselves from arguing with this
assassin, but when he went ini our (ireek driver warned
us: "Don't sav a word, if xou do . . ." — and he
made the gesture of taking aim. The rumour had, in
fact, got^ajiout that we were .Armenians, whicii was as
^ood a~s to sav condemned to death.

One davwe~~met a convoy of exiles, who had said
good-bvr to their prosperous \i I lag<\s and were ai (hat
moment on their way to Kamakh Iktghaz. \\> had to
draw up a long time b\' the roadside while ilie\ marched

* This was not the route followed b\ the convoys of exiles.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

past. The scene will never be forgotten by either of us :
a very small number of elderly men, a large number of
women — vigorous figures with energetic features — a
crowd of pretty children, some of them fair and blue-
eyed, one little girl smiling at the strangeness of all she
was seeing, but on all the other faces the solemnity of
death. There was no noise; it was all quiet, and they
marched along in an orderly way, the children generally
riding on the ox-carts; and so they passed, some of them
greeting us on the way — all these poor people, who are
now standing at the throne of God, and w hose cry goes
up before Him. An old woman was made -to get down
from her donkey — she could no longer keep the saddle.
Was she killed on the spot? Our hearts had become as
cold as ice.

The gendarme attached to us told us then that he had
escorted a convoy of 3,000 women and children from
Mamahatoun (near Erzeroum) to Kamakh Boghaz.
^'Hep gildi, bildi," he said: ''All_gone, all, dead. U
We asked him : " Why condemn them to this frightful
torment ; why not kill them in their villages ?" Answer :
"It is best as it is. They ought to be made to suffer;
and, besides, there would be no place left for us Moslems
with all these corpses about. They will make a stench !"

We spent a night at Enderessi, one day's journey from
Shabin Kara-Hissar. As usual, we had been given for
our lodging an empty Armenian house. On the wall
there was a pencil scrawl in Turkish: '^ Ouv__d^^i^\\\ng
is on the mountains, we have no longer any need of a

roof to cm-er us; we have already drained the bitter cup
of death, we have no more need of a judge."

The ground floor rooms of the house were still ten-
anted by the women and children. The gendarmes told
us that they would be exiled next morning, but they did
not know that yet ; they did not know what had become

THE SIX ARMEXIAX VILAVETS.

of the men of the house; they were restless, but not vet
desperate. v

Just after I had gone to sleep, I was awakened hv shots
in our immediate neighbourhood. The reports followed
one another rapidly, and I distinctlv heard the words of
command. I realised at once what was happening, and
actually experienced a feeling of relief at the idea that
these poor creatures were now bevond the reach of
human cruelty.

Next morning our people told us that ten .\rmenians
had been shot — that was the firing that we had heard —
and that the Turkish civilians of the place were now
being sent out to chase the fugitives. Indeed, we saw
them starting off on horseback with guns. At the road-
side were two armed men standing under a tree and
dividing between them the clothes of a dead Armenian.
They were just holding up a pair of blue cloth trousers.
We passed a place covered with clotted blood, though
the corpses had been removed. It was the 250 road-
making soldiers, of whom our gendarme had told us.

Once we met a large number of (hese labourers, who
had so far been allowed to do their work in peace. Thev
had been sorted into three gangs — Moslems, dreeks and
Armenians. There were several officers with the latter.
Our young Hassan exclaimed: "They are all going to
be butchered." We continued our journey, and the
road mounted a hill. Then our dri\er pointed with his
whip towards the valley, and we saw that the Armenian
gang was being made to stand out on the high road.
There were about 400 of them, and they were being made
to line up on the edge of a slope. We know what hap-
pened after that.

Two davs before we reached Si\as, we again saw the
same sight. The soldiers' bayonets glittered in the sun.

GER2IANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

At another place there were ten gendarmes shooting
them down, while Turkish workmen were finishing off
the victims with knives and stones. Here ten Armenians
had succeeded in getting away.

Later on, in the Mission Hospital at Sivas, we carae
iicross one of the men who had escaped. He told us that
about loo Armenians had been slaughtered there. Our
informant himself had received a terrible wound in the
nape of the neck and had fainted. Afterwards he had
recovered consciousness and had dragged himself in two
■days to Sivas.

Twelve hours' distance from Sivas, w-e spent the night
in a government building. For hours a gendarme, sit-
ting in front of our door, crooned to himself over and
over again: " Ermenleri hep kesdiler — the Armenians
have all been killed!" In the next room they w^ere talk-
ing on the telephone. We made out that they were
giving instructions as to how the Armenians were to
be arrested. They were talking chiefly about a certain
•Ohannes, whom they had not succeeded in finding yet.

One night we slept in an Armenian house where the
w^omen had just heard that the men of the family had
been condemned to death. It was frightful to hear their
•cries of anguish. "Cannot your Emperor help us?"
they cried. The gendarme saw the despair on our faces,
and said : " Their crying bothers you ; I will forbid them
lo crv." However, he let himself be mollihed. He had
taken particular pleasure in pointing out to us all the
horrors that we encountered, and he said to young
Hassan : " First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks,
then the Kurds." He would certainly have been de-
lighted to add : " And then the foreigners !" Our Greek
driver was the victim of a still more ghastly joke :
" Look, down there in the ditch; there are Greeks there
too!"

THE SIX ARM EX I AX VILAYETS.

At last we reached Si\as. We had to wait an hour
in front of the Government Building before the exam-
ination of our papers was completed and we were given
permission to go to the Americans. There, too, all was
trouble and sorrow.

On the I St July we left Sivas, and reached Kaisaria
on the 4th. AVe had been given permission to go to
Talas, after depositing our baggage at the Jesuit School;
but when we wanted to go on from Kaisaria, we were
refused leave and taken back to the Jesuit School, where
a gendarme was posted in front of our door. However,
the American Missionaries succeeded in getting us set
at liberty.

We then returned to Talas, where we passed several
days full of commotion, for there, as well as at Kaisaria,
there were many arrests being made. The poor Arme-
nians never knew what the morrow would bring, and
then came the terrifving news that all Armenians had
been cleared out of Sivas. What happened there and in
the villages of the surrounding districts will be reported
by the American Mission.

When we discovered that thev meant to keep us there
— for they had prevented us from joining the Austrians
for the journey — we telegraphed to the German Em-
bassv, and so obtained permission to start. There is
nothing to tell about this part of our journey, except
that the locusts had in places destroyed all the fruit and
vegetables, so that the Turks are already beginning to
bave some experience of the Divine punishment.

5. THE TOWN OF H.

Statement made by Miss DA., a Danish Lady in
the Service of the German Red Cross at H.,
to Mr. DB. at Basle, and communicated by
Mr. DB. to Lord Bryce.

Sister DA. left the German Red Cross Mission at H.
in April, 1916, travelling through Ourfa to Aleppo, and
thence by road and railway across Anatolia to Constan-
tinople. Mr. DB. met her at Basle, on her way from
Constantinople to Denmark, in the house of a mutual
friend.

Sister DA. told Mr. DB. that on the i6th March, 1915,
the German Vice-Consul appointed provisionally to
Erzeroum (the Consul himself being interned in Russia)
was passing through the town of H., accompanied by
two German officers, and arranged to dine that evening
with the German Red Cross Staff, after paying his
respects to the Vali. At the hour fixed, only the two
officers appeared. They said that they had called, with
the Vice-Consul, upon the Vali, but after a time the
Vali had shewn signs of being irked by their presence,
and so they had taken th(M"r dc^parturc, leaving the Vali
and the Vice-Consul together. The company waited
for the Vice-Consul about two liours. He arrived about

THE SIX ARMEXIAX VILAYETS.

9.30 p.m., in a state of great agitation, and told them
at once the purport of his interview. The \^ali had
declared to him that the Armenians in Turkey must be,
and were going to be, exterminated^ They had grown,
lie said, in wealth and numbers until thev had become
a menace to the ruling 'J'urkish race; extermination was
the only remedy. The Vice-Consul had expostulated,
and represented that persecution always increased the
spiritual vitality of a subject race, and on grounds of
expediency wrs the worst policy for the rulers. " Well,
we shall see," said the \'ali, and closed the conversa-
tion.

This incident occurred on the i6th March, 1915, and Mr.
OB. points out that it nuisi have been practically simul-
taneous with an interview given by Enver Pasha at Con-
stantinople to the Grei^^orian Bishop of Konia in the G^^
course of February, i(ji57"nl(:i Style. In this interview
the Bishop had asked Knver whether he were satisfied
with the conduct of the Armenian soldiers in the Otto-
man Armv, and Enver had testified warmly to their
energy, courage and loyalty — so warmly, in fact, that
the Bishop at once asked whether he might publish this
testimonial over Enver's name. Enver readily con-
sented, and the Gregorian Patriarchate at Constantin-
ople accordingly circulated an authorised account of
the interview to the Armenian, and even to the Turkish,
press.* ThuSj^^m the latter j^^^rj^M^bruary, I9j5,jthe
Central Governmj^rii_aMC^instantinople was advertising
Its friendly feelings towards itii- Arm enTansTTbjects, while
lir the i6tTi March, less than a month later, it had given
ils~representative in a remote province to understand

* This incident was rommiinicated to Mr. DB. by DC. Effendi,
a «:entlcnian who had held hi^h office under the Ottoman Govern-
nicnt till the outbreak of the War.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

that_ageneral massacre of these same Armenians was
imminent. ~ ~~"" "

To return to Sister DA.'s narrative — she told Mr.
DB. that between February and the beginning of May,
19 1 5, about 400 Armenians had been arrested and im-
prisoned at H. They were the young men, the strong
in body and the intellectuals. Most of their kind had
been taken for the Army in the mobilisation of the pre-
vious autumn, but these 400 had been left, and were
now thrown into prison instead of being conscribed.

At the beginning of May, the Vali of H. sent for the
head of the German Protestant Mission Station in the
town, and requested him to tell the Armenians that they
must surrender their arms. Otherwise, he said, the most
stringent measures would be taken against them. The
missionaries must persuade them to deliver up the arms
quickly. The head of the Mission Station called a
meeting of Armenian notables, and put to them what
the Vali had said. The Armenians decided to consult
with their Turkish fellow-townsmen, and so a mixed
meeting was held of all the Turkish and Armenian nota-
bles of H. At this meeting the Turkish notables urged
the Armenians to give up their arms, and promised that,
if they did so, they themselves would guarantee their
security, and would see that they suffered nothing at the
Government's hands.

This promise induced the Armenians to comply. They
collected their arms and presented them to the Vali, but
the Vali declared that all had not been brought. The
newest and most dangerous weapons, he said, had been
in the hands of the 400 prisoners. These' must be sur-
rendered also, or the penalties he had threatened would
still be inflicted on the whole Armenian community at
H. So the notables went to the men in prison, and
besought them to reveal where their arms were hidden;

THE SIX ARMENIAN VILAYETS.

all the Gregorian priests went, and the head of the
German ^lission Station went with them. The 400 were
obstinate at first, but it was represented to them that,
if they refused, they would be responsible for the destruc-
tion of the whol-e community, and at last they gave in.
They revealed the hiding-places, and the arms were
duly found and delivered up to the Vali.

The Vali immediately had photographs taken of all
the arms collected, and sent them to Constantinople as
evidence that an Armenian revolution was on the point
of breaking out at H. He asked for a free hand to sup-
press it, and an order came back from Constantinople
that he was to take whatever measures he considered
necessary on the spot.

After that, the 400 voung men were conveved out of
the town bv night and never heard j>fafyain. Shots
were said to have been heard in the distance.

Three days later, the rest of the Armenian community
at H. was summoned b\- bugle 10 assemble before the
Government Building, and then deported. The men
were first sent off in one direction, and later the \\omen
and children, on ox-carts, in another. They were only
given a few hours to make their preparations, and Sister
DA. described their consternation as being terrible.
Thev tried to dispose of their property, which the Turks
bought up for practicallv nothing. Sewing-machines,
for instance, sold for two or three piastres (4d. to 6d.).
The process of deportation was extended to the whole
Vilayet.

The Armenian children in the German Orphanage at
H. were sent away with the rest. " My orders," said
the Vali, "are to deport all Armenians. I rannot make
an exception of these." fie announced, however, tTiat
a Government Orphanage vas lo be estni")1ish('d f(^r any

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

children that remained, and shortly afterwards he called
on Sister DA. and asked her to come and visit it. Sister
DA. went with him, and found about 700 Armenian
children in a good building. For every twelve or fifteen
children there was one Armenian nurse, and they w^ere
well clothed and fed. "See what care the Government
is taking of the Armenians," the Vali said, and she
returned home surprised and pleased; but when she
visited the Orphanage again several days later, there
were only jfiir tee n^f the ^00 childrejiJeft^-the j;est had
disappeared. They had been^aken, she learnt, to alake
six_hours' journe)^yToad from tlieltown and drowned.
Three hundrexi fresh children w^ere subsequently col-
lected at the "Orphanage," and Sister DA. believed
that they suffered the same fate as their predecessors.
These victims were the residue of the Armenian children
at H. TJie^ finest boys and prettiest girls had been
picked out_^nd carrTed~off by the Tul-ks and Kurds of
THedistrict, and it was the remainder, wlio had been
left on the Government's hands, that were disposed of
in this way.

As soon as the Armenians had been deported from
H., convoys of other exiles began to pass through from
the districts further north. Sister DA. did not see these
convoys, because they made a detour round the town,
and she never left the town precincts; but she talked
with many people who did see them, and they gave a
terrible description of their plight. The roads near the
town, they said, were littered with the corpses of those
who had died of sickness or exhaustion, or from the
violence of their guards. And these accounts w^ere con-
firmed by her own experiences last April (1916), on her
journey to Aleppo. On the road to Aleppo from Ourfa
she passed numbers of corpses lightly buried under a
layer of soil. The extremities of the limbs were pro-

THE SIX ARM EX I AX VILAYETS,

truding, and had been gnawed by dogs. She was told
by people she met that unheard-of airocities had been
committed, and that there were cases of T\ omen who had"
drowned themselves to escape th~<iir tormentors.

It was bister DA.'s impression that the depDrtation
and massacre of the Armenians had ruined Turkey
ecoiTofmcaJlv. I'he Armenians had been the only skilled"
workers in the country, and industry came to a stand-
still when they were gone. You could not replace copper
vessels for your household; you could not get vour roof
re-tiled. The Government had actuallv retained a few
Armenian artisans — bakers, masons, etc. — to work for
the Army, and whatever work was still done was done
by these and a few others who had gone over to Islam.
But though the sources of production were cut off, the
Turks had not begun to feel the pinch. Having laid
hands on the propertv of the Armenians, thev were
richer, for the moment, than before. During the past
year bread had been plentiful :ind cheap, cattle and
meat had been abundant, and there were still enough
supplies, she thought, to last for some time \et. I'nder
these circumstances, the Turkish peasantrv were well
content — except for the women, who resented the absence
of their husbands at the war. The dearth of men, Sister
DA. said, was evervwhere noticeable. She had been
told, however, that some Kurdish tribes had refused
to furnish recruits, and that the Ki/.ii Bashis of the
Dersim had furnished none at all. The Government
had been preparing an expedition against the Ki/.il
Bashis to extort a toll of conscripts, but the plan had
been thwarted by the Russian advance. In tlie Turkish
villages agricultural work was being larg(*lv carried on
by the Armenian women and childrni, who had been
handed over to the Moslem peasants by the authorities.
Sister DA. saw quantities of them <'\ cryw here, prac^ti-

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

cally in the condition of slaves. They were never
allowed to rest in peace, but were constantly chivied
about from one village to another.

As she came down to Aleppo she found the country
under good cultivation. Great stores of bread had been
accumulated for the army in Mesopotamia. In Ana-
tolia, on the other hand, the fields were neglected, and
she thought that there famine was' not far off. But it
was not till she reached Constantinople that she found
any present scarcity. In the provinces only sugar and
petrol had been scarce ; at Constantinople all commodi-
ties were both scarce and dear.

Sister DA. was told at Constantinople that Turks of
all parties were united in their approval of what was
being done to the Armenians, and that Enver Pasha
openly boasted of it as his personal achievement. Talaat
Bey, too, was reported to have remarked, on receiving
the news of Vartkes'* assassination : " There is no room
in the Empire for both Armenians and Turks. Either
they had to go or we."

* Mr. Vartkes was an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Par-
liament, who was murdered, togrether with another deputy, Mr.
Zohrab, when he was being; escorted by g-endarmes from Aleppo
to be court-martialled at Diyarbekir. — Editor.

6. MALATIA,

Statement by a German Eye-Witness.

In Malatia there were 10,000 — 12,000 Armenians.
A German, who left Malatia immediatelv before the
deportation, reports as follows on the events which pre-
ceded the execution of that measure : —

" The Mutessarif, Xabi Bey, an extremely friendly
and well-disposed elderly gentleman, was deposed some-
time about May — as we suppose, on the ground that
he would not have carried out the measures against the
Armenians with the desired harshness.

" His deputy, the Kaimakam of Arrha, had all the
qualities required for that purpose. There could hardly
be any doubt as to his anti-Armenian feelings or as to
the lawlessness of his mode of action. He is probably
responsible, together with a clique of rich 'Beys,' for
the arbitrary imprisonment of many Armenians, for the
inhuman application of the bastinado, and also for the
clandestine murder of Armenian men. The Mutessarif 's
official successor, Reshid Pasha, who arrived from
Constantinople towards the end of June, a conscientious
Kurd, endowed with an altogether surprising kindness
of heart, did ever\'thing in his power, from the fir^t diw
of his assumption of the duties of his office, to mitigate
the fate of the numerous Armenian prisoners, to prevent

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

outrages against the population on the part of the irregu-
lar soldiers and Zaptiehs, and to make possible a lawful
and humane settlement of the extremely difficult situa-
tion ; in doing this he knew that he incurred danger
and put himself into a very undesirable position. Not-
withstanding his severity, the greater part of the i\rme-
nian population held him in esteem as a just, incor-
ruptible and warm-hearted man. Unfortunately his
powers did not go very far. The movement against
the Armenians had already, on Jiis arrival, gained too
much strength, his own executive staff w^as neither
sufficiently numerous nor suffi.ciently trustworthy to
enable him to make any energetic stand for the main-
tenance of law and order. He succumbed to the power
of his adversaries and collapsed physically and morally
within a very few days. Even during his serious illness
he used every particle of strength that was in him to
insure that the banished Armenians should be able to
undertake their journey with safety and be properly
cared for on the way.

" He had delayed the departure of the Armenians from
w'eek to week, partly with the silent hope that his great
endeavours to procure a countermanding order might
be successful, and oartlv in order to be able to make
all preparations for a humane execution of the deporta-
tion order. Finally he had to give way to the stringent
directions of the central government and to the pressure
of the party opposed to him in the town.

" Before the deportation, which was effected towards
the middle of August, wholesale murders among the
male population occurred in the beginning of July."

C CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.

7. EXILES FROM ZEITOUN.

Diary of a Foreign Resident in the Town of B. on
the Cilician Plain. Communicated by a Swiss
Gentleman of Geneva.

Sunday, 14//1 March, 191 5.

This morning I had a long conversation with Mr.

about events at Zeituun. He iias managed to obtain

some information regarding tlie little Armenian town,
although all direct communication with it has been inter-
rupted. Turkish troops ha\e left Aleppo iuv Zeiloun
— some say 4,000, some 6,000, others 8,000. With what

intention, one wonders? Mr. , who has been there

himself during last summer and this winter, assures
me that the Armenians have no wish to revolt, and are
prepared to put up with anything the Government may
do. Contrary to the old-established custom, a levy was
made at Zeitoun at the time of the August mobilisation,
and thev did not ofter the slightest resistance. None the
less, the Government has played them false. In October,

GERJIAXY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

19 14, their leader, Nazaret Tcliaoush, came to Marash
with a "safe conduct " to arrange some special points
with the officials. In spite of the " safe conduct," they
imprisoned him, tortured him and put him to death.
Still the people of Zeitoun remained quiet. Bands of
zaptiehs (Turkish gendarmes), quartered in the town,
have been molesting the inhabitants, raiding shops,
stealing, maltreating the people and dishonouring their
women. It is obvious that the Government are trying
to get a case against the Zeitounlis, so as to be able to
exterminate them at their pleasure and yet justify them-
selves in the eyes of the world.

— th April, 1 915.

Three Armenians from Dort Yol were hanged last
night in the chief square of Adana. The Government
declare that they had been signalling to the British war-
ship or warships stationed in the Gulf of Alexandretta.
This is untrue, for I know, though I dare not put the
source of my information on paper, that only one Arme-
nian from Dort Yol has had any communication with the
English.

— th April.

Two more Armenians from Dort Yol have been
hanged at Adana.

— th April.

Three Armenians have been hanged at Adana. We
were out riding to-day, and the train came into the
station just as we reached the railway. Imagine our
indignation when we saw a cattle-truck filled with Arme-
nians from Zeitoun. Most of these mountaineers were
in rags, but a few were quite well dressed. They had
been driven out of their homes and were going to be
transplanted, God knows where, to some town in Asia
Minor. It seems we have returned to the davs of the

CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA,

Assyrians, if whole populations can be exiled in this
wav, and the sacred liberty ()\ the individual so violated.

— th April {the next day).

\W' were able to see the unfortunate refugees, who are
still here to-day. These are the circumstances of their
departure from Zeitoun, or rather this is the tragedy
which preceded their exile, though it was not the cause
of it.

The Turkish gendarmes outraged several girls in the
town, and were attacked in consequence by about twenty
of the more hot-headed young men. Several gendarmes
were killed, though all the while the population as a
whole was opposed to bloodshed, and desired most ear-
nestly to avoid the least pretext for reprisals. The twenty
rebels were driven out of the town and took refuge in a
monastery about three-quarters of an hour's distance
from the town. At this point the troops from Aleppo
arrived. The Zeitounlis gave them lodging, and it
seemed that all was going excellently between the popu-
lace and the 8,000 soldiers under their German officers.^

The Turks surrounded the monastery and attacked it
for a whole day; but the insurgents defended themselves,
and, at the cost of one man slightly wounded, they killed
300 of the regular troops. During the night, moreover,
they managed to escape.

Their escape was as yet unknown to the town when,
about nine o'clock on the following morning, the Turkish
Commandant summoned about 300 of the principal in-
habitants to present themselves immediately at the mili-
tary headquarters. Thcv obeyed the summons without
the least suspicion, believing themselves to be on excel-
lent terms with the authorities. Some of ihem took a
little monev, others some clothing or wraps, but the
maj(^ritv came in their work'ing (^lothesand brought noth-

5.5

GERMANY, TUUKEV AND ARMENIA.

ing with them. Some of them had even left their flocks
on the mountains in the charge of children. When they
reached the Turkish camp, they were ordered to leave
the town at once without returning to their homes. They
were completely stupefied. Leave? But for where?
They did not know.

They had been unable even yet to learn their destina-
tion, but it is probable that they are being sent to the
Vilayet of Konia. Some of them have come in carriages
and some on foot.
— th April.

I heard to-day that the whole population of Dort Vol
has been taken away to work on the roads. They con-
tinue to hang Armenians at Adana, It is a point worth
remembering that Zeitoun and Dort YOl are the two
Armenian towns which held their own during the Adana
massacres of 1909.

—th May.

A new batch of Zeitounlis has just arrived. I saw
them marching along the road, an interminable file
under the Turkish whips. It is really the most miser-
able and pitiable thing in the world. Weak and scarcely
clothed, they rather drag themselves along than walk-.
Old women fall down, and struggle to their feet again
when the zaptieh approaches with lifted stick. Others
are driven along like donkeys. I saw one young woman
drop down exhausted. The Turk gave her two or three
blows with his stick and she raised herself painfully.
Her husband w^as walking in front with a baby two or
three days old in his arms.

Further on an old woman had stumbled, and slipped
down into the mud. The gendarme touched her two or
three times with his whip, but she did not stir; then he
gave her several kicks with his foot; still she did not
move; then he kicked her harder, and she rolled over

CI Lie I A AXD y OUT HERN SYRIA,

into the ditch; I hope that she was already dead.

These people Iia\e now arrived in the town. They
have had nothing to eat for two days. The Turks for-
bade them to bring anything with them from Zeitoun,
except, in some cases, a few blankets, a donkey, a mule,
or a goat. But even these things they are selling here
for practically nothing — a goat for one medjidia (3s. 2d.),
a mule for half a lira (nine shillings). This is because
the Turks steal them on the road. One young woman
who had only been a mother eight days, had her donkey
stolen the first night of the journey. What a way of
starting out I The German and Turkish officers made
the Armenians leave all their property behind, so that
the mouhadjirs (refugees) from Thrace might enter into

possession. There are five families in 's house I

The town and the surrounding villages (about 25,000
inhabitants) are entirely destroyed.

Between fifteen and sixteen thousand exiles have been
sent towards Aleppo, but they are going to be taken
further. Perhaps into Arabia? Can the real object be
to starve them to death ? 'i'hose who have passed through
our town were going to the \^ila\-et of Konia; there too
there are deserts.

—th May.

Letters ha\e come which confirm my fears. It is not
to Aleppo that the Zeitounlis are being sent, but to Der-
el-Zor, in Arabia, between Aleppo and Babylonia. And
those we saw the other day are going to Kara-Pounar,
bet\\(X^n Konia and Eregli, in the most arid part of Asia
Minor.

Certain ladies here hav<' gixcn blankets and shoes to
some of the poorest. 'I'he local Christians, too, have
shown tiiemselves wonderfullv self-sacrificing. But
what can one* do? It is a little drop of charity in the
ocean of their sufferinf;-

.S7

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

— th May.

News has come from Konia. Ninety Armenians have
been taken to Kara-Pounar. The Zeitounlis have arrived
at Konia. Their sufferings have been increased by their
having had to wait — some of them 8, some 15, some
20 days — at Bozanti (the terminus of the AnatoHan Rail-
way in the Taurus, 2,400 feet above sea level). This
delay was caused by the enormous masses of troops pass-
ing continually through the Cilician Gates; it is the
army of Syria which is being recalled for the defence
of the Dardanelles.

AVhen the exiles reached Konia, they had eaten noth-
ing, according to our news, for three days. The Greeks
and Armenians at once collected monev and food for
their relief, but the Vali of Konia would not allow any-
thing of any kind to be given to the exiles. They there-
fore remained another three days without food, at the
end of which time the Vali removed the prohibition and
allowed food to be served out to them under the super-
visioH of the zaptiehs.

My informant tells me that, after the departure of the
Armenians from Konia for Kara-Pounar, he saw an
Armenian woman throw her new-born baby into a well ;
another is said to have thrown hers out of the window
of the train.
— th May.

A letter has come from Kara-Pounar. I know the
writer of it, and can have no doubt of his truthfulness.
He says that the 6,000 or 8,000 Armenians from Zeitoun
are dying there from starvation at the rate of 150 to 200
a day. So from 15,000 to 19,000 Zeitounlis must have
been sent into Arabia, the total population of the town
and the outlying villages having been about 25,000.
— th May.

The whole garrison of and of Adana have left for

CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.

the Dardanelles. There are no troops left to defend the
district if it should be attacked from outside.
— th May {the next day).

New troops have arrived, but thcv are untrained.
—th May. '.

The last batch of Zeitounlis passed through our town
to-day, and 1 was able to speak to some of them in the
han where they had been put. I saw one poor little girl
who had been walking, barefoot, for more than a week ;
her only clothing was a torn pinafore; she was shivering
with cold and hunger, and her bones were literally push*
ing through her skin.

About a dozen children had to be left on the road
because they could not walk any further. Have they
died of hunger? Probably, but no one will ever know
for certain. I also saw two poor old women without
any hair left, or with hardly any. When the Turks
drove them out of Zeitoun they had been rich, but they
could not take anything with them beyond the clothes
they were wearing. They managed somehow to hide
five or six gold pieces in their hair, but, unfortunately
for them, the sun glinted on the metal as they marched
along and the glitter attracted the notice of a zaptieh.
He did not waste any time in picking out the pieces of
gold, but found it much quicker to tear the hair out by
the roots.

I came across another very characteristic case. A citi-
zen of Zeitoun, formerly a rich man, was leading two
donkevs, the last remnants of his fortune. A gendarme
came along and seized their bridles; the Armenian
implored him to leave them, saying that he was already
on the verge of starvation. The only answer he received
from the Turk was a shower of blows, repeated till he
rolled over in the dust; even then the Turk continued
beatini: him, till the dust was turned into a blox)d-soaked

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

mud; then he gave a final kick and went off with the
donkeys. Several Turks stood by watching; they did
not appear to be at all surprised, nor did any of them
attempt to intervene.
— th May.

The authorities have sent a number of people from
Dort Vol to be hanged in the various towns of Adana
Vilayet.
—th May, *

There is a rumour of a partial exodus from Marash.
It is going to be our town next.

Dort Yol has also been evacuated and the inhabitants
sent into Arabia. Hadjin is threatened with the same
fate. There has been a partial clearing out of Adana;
Tarsus and Mersina are threatened too, and also Aintab.

8. Information regarding Events in Armenia, pub-
lished in the ** Sonnenaufgang" (Organ of the
*' German League for the Promotion of
Christian Charitable Work in the East"),
October, 1915; and in the " Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift," November, 1915.

This testimony is especially signijicau! because it
comes fro7n a German source, and because the Ger-
man Censor made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.

The same issue of the " Sonnenaujgang " contains
the following editorial note : —

*' In our preceding issue ive published an account by
one of our sisters {Schwester Mohring) of her experi-
ences on a journey y but we have to abstain from giving
to the public the new details that are reaching us in
abundance. It costs us much to do so, as our friends
will understand ; but the political situation of our coun-
try demands it."

In the case of the " Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,'*
the Censor was not content with putting pressure on the
editor. On the loth Xovember, he forbade the repro-
duction of the present article in the Gcr)nan press, and
did his best to confiscate the whole current issue of the
magazine. Copies of both publications, however, found
their leay across the frontier.

Both the incriminating articles are drawn from com-
mon sources, but the extracts they make from them do

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

not entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together,
a fuller version of these sources can be compiled.

In the text printed below, the unbracketed paragraphs
are those which appear both in the " Sonnenaufgang "
and in the '' Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift" ; while par-
agraphs included in angular brackets [ < > ] appear only
in the " Sonnenaufgang," and those in square brackets
([ ]) only in the '' Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift."

Between the loth and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most
prominent Armenians and other Christians, without
distinction of confession, were arrested in the Vilayets
of Diyarbekir and Mamouret-ul-Aziz.

[On the 30th May, 674 of them were embarked on
thirteen Tigris barges,^under the pretext that they were
to be taken to Mosul. The Vali's aide-de-camp, assisted
by fifty gendarmes, was in charge of the convoy. Half
the gendarmes started off on the barges, while the other
half rode along the bank. A short time after the start
the Armenians were stripped of all their money (about
£6,000 Turkish) and then of their clothes ; after that they
were thrown into the river. The gendarmes on the bank
were ordered to let none escape. The clothes of these
victims were sold in the market of Diyarbekir.]

<About the same time 700 young Armenian m.en
were conscribed, and were tlien seffHto build the Kara-
baghtche-Habashi road. There is no news of these
700 men either.

It is said that in Diyarbekir five or six priests were
stripped naked one day, smeared with tar7~arii31i ragged
through the streets.

In the Vilayet of Aleppo they have evicted the inhabi-
tants of Hadjin, Shar, Albustan, Goksoun, Tasholouk,

CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.

Zeitoun, all the villages of Alabash, Geben, Shivilgi,
Furnus and the surrounding villages, Fundadjak,
Hassan-Beyli, Harni, Lappashli, Dort Yol and
others. >

[They have marched them off in convoys into the desert
on the pretext* of settling them there. In the village of
Tel-Armen (alone^ the line of the Bagdad Railway, near
Mosul) and in the neighbouring villages about 5,000
people were massacred, leaving only a few women^ and
cTrildrerT] The people were thrown alive down wells or
into the fire. They pretend that the Armenians are to
be employed in colonising land situated at a distance
of twenty-four to thirty kilometres from the Bagdad
Railway. But as it is onlv the women and children who
are sent into exile, since all the men, with the exception
of the ver\' old, are at the war, this means nothing less
than the wholesale murder of the famihcs, since they
have neither the labour nor the capital for clearing the
country.]

A German met a Christian soldier of his ac(|uaintance,
who was on furlough from Jerusalem. The man was wan-
dering up and down along the banks of the luiph rates
searching for his wife and children, who were supposed
to have been transferred to that neighbourhood. Such
unfortunates are often to be met with in Aleppo, because
thev believe that there they will learn something about
the whereabouts of their relations. It has often hap-
pened that when a member of a family iias been absent,
he discovers on his return that all his family are gonp
— evicted from their homes.

[For a whole month corpses were observed floating
down the River luiph rates nearly every day, often in
batches of from two to six corpses bound togetlier. The
male corpses are in many cases hideously mutilated
(sexual organs cut off, and so on), the female corpses

6.1

GERMANY, TVRKF.Y AND ARMENIA.

are ripped open. The Turkish military authority in con-
trol of the Euphrates, the Kaimakam of Djerablous,
refuses to allow the burial of these corpses, on the
ground that he finds it impossible to establish whether
they belong to Moslems or to Christians. He adds that
no one has given him any orders on the subject. The
corpses stranded on the bank are devoured by dogs and
vultures. To this fact there are many German eye-
witnesses. An employee of the Bagdad Railway has
brought the information that the pjisons at Bi£edjjJ5^
are filled regularly_every day and emptied every night
— into the Euphrates. Between Diyarbekir and Qurfa
a German cavalry captain saw innumerable corpses
lying unburied all along the road.]

<The following telegram was sent to Aleppo from
Diyarbekir: — ''We have accepted the True Religion.
Now we are all right." The inhabitants of a village
near Anderoum went over to Islam and were allowed to
stay. At Hadjin six families wanted to become Moham-
medans. They were told : "Nothing under one hundred
families will be accepted."

Aleppo and Ourfa are the assembling-places for the
convov of exiles. There were about 5,000 of them
in Aleppo during June and July, while during the
whole period from April to July many more than 50,000
must have passed through the city. TlTe girls^ere
abducted almost without exception by the soldieFs and
thei r~A ralTTiahgers^ . One' father, on the verge of
despair,~lSesougKrme to take with me at least his fifteen-
year-old daughter, as he could no longer protect her
from the persecutions inflicted upon her. The children
left behind bv the Armenians on their journey are past
counting.

Women whose pains came upon them on the way had
to continue their journey without respite. A woman

64"

CILICIA AND XORTHERy SYRIA,

bore twins in the neighbourhood of Aintab; next morn-
ing she had to go on again. She very soon had to leave
the children under a bush, and a little while after she
collapsed herself. Another, whose pains came upon her
during the march, was compelled to go on at once and
fell down dead almost immediately. There were several
more incidents of the same kind between Marash and
Aleppo.*

The villagers of Shar were permitied to carrv all their
household effects with them. On the road they were
suddenly told: " An order has come for us to leave the
high road and travel across the mountains." Every-
thing— waggons, oxen and belongings — had to be left
behind on the road, and then they went on over the
mountains on foot. This vear the heat has been excep-
tionally severe, and many women and children naturally
succumbed to it even in these early stages of their
journey.

There are about 30,000 exiles of whom we hjuig no
news at all, as they have arrived neither at Aleppo nor
at Ourfa.>

* "We have just picked up fifteen babies. Three are already
dead. They were terribly thin and ailing* when we found th»^m.
Ah I If we (ould only write all that we see." — Extract from a
letter dated Marash, 4th June, igis, publi.shod in "Sonnmauf-
g^ang"," September, iq'S-

9. Extracts from the Records of a German who
died in Turkey.

Between the 28th July and the 20th August, 1915, I
travelled to Marash. At Beshgoz, between Killis and
Aintab, it was a subject of conversation among the
villagers that the deportation of the Armenians would
begin at Aintab too on the following day. A little
while after, a well-dressed gentleman, a Circassian,
according to his appearance, being partly in mufti
and partly in officer's uniform, joined the group of
talkers and. asked: "From what part of the town are
people being sent away ? By what road do they go ?
What kind of people are they ? Are they people from
whom anything is to be got?" When one of the per-
sons present asked him whether he was a civilian or in
military service, he said smilingly: "Is there a finer
opportunity of being a soldier than now?" The same
person said afterwards : " This time_J}erma^^
these unbelieving swine a lesson which_they_ will not
forget/'*

T)n hearing this, I could not refrain from replying that
it was^soiling the_name of Germany to mention it in
con n^ctk)n yvith the_ things which I had just been com-
pelled_ to_hear. On my return journey I heard that the
first convoys from Aintab, consisting almost exclusively
of well-to-do families, were stripped to their shirts,

* The italics are the Editor's.
66

CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA.

and I was assured from several sides that this was done
with the connivance of the Government authorities, with
w^hom the above-mentioned questionable gentleman
must, according to all appearances, have been in rela-
tion. At Karaboylik, between Aintab and Marash, I
met a convoy of Armenians, consisting of about forty
women and children and five or six men. Close in front
of them, at a distance of about i8o yards, loo newly-
enlisted soldiers were marching. Tl3iere_was_a_yming
lady among the women, _a_ teacher, who_for several
yeai¥ had been in German employrnentj she had just
recovered from a serious attack of typhoid fever. The
soldiers wanted her and a voungwife, wliose^hjisbaiid
is at^present~a~ s^IHier Tn'TJamascusTto spend the_night
with_jhem, and used force to make them. It was only
through the Mohammedan mule drivers coming to the
assistance of the women, that the soldiers could be kept
off during their three attacks.

On the 6th August the Armenian village of Fundad-
jak, near Marash, a place of about 3^ooojti habitants^
was battered down to the ground. The population, con-
sisting almosF excTTi^iveT}' of mule drivers, had, during
the preceding three months, been frequently compelled
to transport Armenians in the direction of the Euphrates.
Thev had seen the corpses in the Euphrates, and had
also observed with their own eyes the selling and 'ranging
of women and girls.

In an Armenian school at Marash I saw over loo
women and children with bullet wounds in their legs
and their arms, and with all sorts of mutilations; among
them were children of one to two years.

On the 13th August, 34 Aririenians, including two
boys twelve years old, were shot at Marash. Again,
on the 15th August, 24_were shot and 14 were hanged.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

The 24 who were shot were tied together with a heavy
chain that went round their necks, and were made to
stand up together in one mass. They were shotjjti the
presence of the Mohammedan population behind the
'American^ College^ With my own eyes I saw the
bodies, while still convulsed by the agonies of death,
being abandoned to the license of the rough civilian
mob, who pulled the hands and feet of the corpses;
and during the next half-hour the policemen and
gendarmes shot continuously with revolvers on these
corpses, some of which were terribly disfigured, while
the population looked on with amusement. Afterwards
the same people marched up and down in front of the
German Hospital and shouted, "Vashasin Almanya*'
(Long Uve__Ger}nany),* Again and again I have been
toT3 by Mohammedans that it was Germany which
caused the Armenians to be extlrpated~irrTHrs way.

On the way from the town to the farm I saw, on the
outskirts of the town, a human head lying on a dung-
heap, which was used as a target by Turkish boys. In
Marash itself, during my stay there, Armenians were
every day killed by the civil population, and the corpses
were left for days in the open sewers or elsewhere.

Kadir Pasha said to me at Marash: "I know that,
in pursuance of an order from the Government, the
whole_male population within the area of the 4th Army
Corps was killed^"

On the 20th August, igist, at .six o'clock in the e\'en-
ing, it was proclaimed at Marash that, according to the
order of the Vali of A dan a, all males over 15 years of
age (5,600 altogether) must be assembled outside the

* The italics are the Editor's.
• t This was a Friday.

CILICIA AXD yORTHERN SYRIA.

town, ready for marching, by mid-day on Saturday;
any one of them found in the town after 12 o'clock
would be shot on the spot. Everyone knew the mean-
ing of this order, and we lived through hours of most
awful terror. At the last moment the Vali's order,
owing to the intervention of the very humane Governor
of Marash, was modified to the extent that the men
would be allowed to leave w^th their families. Only
on the i8th August the Vali had sent for the clerical
authorities, and had given them an assurance that the
Armenians in Marash would not be deported. Thus the
first who had to leave the town had to do so without
any previous preparation.

In the village of Boveren, near Albistan, all the Arme-
nian^inhabitants, 82 in number, with the exception of a
boy twelve years old, who jumped into the water and
escaped, were killed.

In the neighbourhood of Zeitoun the inhabitants of a
village infested by tho smallpox were deported. The
patients suffering from smallpox, including those whose
eyesight had been destroyed by the illness, were lodged
in bans (i.e. inns) at Marash, in which deported persons
from other districts were lodged alreadv.

At Marash T saw a convoy, consisting of about
200 persons, among whom were several blind. A
mother, of the age of about 60, led her daughter, who
was lame from birth; in this manner thev started on
their journey on foot. After an hour's march a man
collapsed near the Krkeness bridge; he was robbed and
killed. Four davs afterwards we still saw his corpse
lying in a ditch.

Last night I called on an acquaintance; he had given
hospitality to a mother and her child who had been
deported from Sivas — the two survivors of a family of
26 persons who had been deported from Sivas three

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

months before and had reached Marash in the last few
days .

In Ainlab I saw a written order of the Governor of
the town, prohibiting the purchase on the part of the
Mohammedan population of any objects belonging to
the deported Armenians. The same Governor caused
preparations to be made for a raid on the deported per-
sons. Tw^o convoys were robbed of everything, down
to the shirts of the people belonging to them.

About 2,800 persons deported from Giirun^ were at-
tacked and robbed at Airan-Pounar (12 hours to the
north-east of Marash) by eight brigands, who wore
uniforms, partly officer's uniform and partlv private's.
At Kisyl Gedjid, ij hours sliort of Airan-Pounar, the
eight brigands joined the gendarmes escorting the con-
voy and had a long conversation with them. At Airan-
Pounar the gendarmes ordered the people to divide into
two parties ; the few men formed one party, and the
women the other party. The women were stripped
naked and robbed of everything; four women and two
girls were dragged aw^in the night~and violated ; fTve*
of_them returried on the foTTowing morning. Tn~a^efile
of the Engissek-DagTrtlrc^^wtiole convoy~was completely
plundered by Turks and Kurds. In this assault 200
persons were killed; 70 severely wounded persons had
to be left behind, and more than 50 more were taken
along with the convoy. I met the convoy, then con-
sisting of about 2,500 persons, at Karaboyilk. The
people were in an indescribable state of misery; one
hour short of Karaboyiik two men were lying on the
road, one with two and the other with seven knife-
wounds; further on there were two exhausted women;
still further four women, including a girl of 13, with
a two days' old baby in her arms, wrapped in rags. A
man of about 60, who was lying in the road with a

'CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA,

deep wound (inflicted by a dagger), as long as a finger
and two fingers wide, told me that he had left Giiriin
with 13 animals. All the animals and all his goods were
taken away from him at Airan-Pounar, and he had
dragged himself away on foot, until he reached a place
about an hour short of Karaboyiik, where he fell down
exhausted.

These people had all been in easy circumstances; the
value of the goods, the animals and the monev of which
they were robbed, is estimated at T£8,ooo. Those who
were exhausted were left lying on the road; corpses
can be seen lying on both sides of it. Among the 2,500
persons of whom this convov \\as composed I saw no
males, with the exception of about 30-40. All males
over the age of 15 were taken awav in the siglrt^f the

^^^2I21^^1»--^-Ild-3V^LC--,R£2l^'^^^^ killed. These Armenians -^
were intentionally transported bv circuitous routes and
over dangerous paths. By the direct road to Marash
thev would have arrived in four davs, and thev have
been on the road for over a month. They had to travel
without animals, without beds, without food; once in
every day they received a thin slice of bread, and then
not enough to satisfv their hunger. Four hundred of
them (Protestants) have in the meantime arrived at
Aleppo; out of these two or three die every day.

The raid at Ainar-Pounar was carried out witji the
connivance of the Kaimakam at Albistan, who made
them pav him Ti:2()o, and promised tin* people that he
would see that they reached Aintab safely. The Kaima-
kam at Giiriin made them pay him T£ 1,020, and gave
the same assurances. I saw a man who, toi^ciher with
others, handed this sum to the Kaimakam in the club
room at Giiriin. In the neighbourhood of Aintab several
women belonging to this convoy were violated in the
night bv civilian inhabitants of Aintab. On the occa-

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

sion of the raid ^it Airan-Pounar men were tied to trees
and burnt alive. While the Armenians at Giiriin \verc
actually leaving the town, the Mollahs called the faithful
to prayer from the roofs of the Christian Churches. An
eye-witness told me about a dispute between two brothers
relating to the booty at Airan-Pounar; one of them said :
" |^QI_ these four loads jjha}'e_ kUled forty women."

At Marash a Alohammedan of the name of Hadji,
v»hom I have known for years, told me the following
incident: " At Nissibin, I and all the mule-drivers were
locked up in a han ; several young women belonging
to Furnus were violated during the night by the gen-
darmes escorting the convoy and by civilians."

At Aintab, at the office of the Commissioner of Police,
a 3,lohammedan Agha said in my presence to an Arme-
nian : " In such and such places letters have been found.
What are your relations with this man ? I have often
told you to become a ^Johammedan : if you had listened
to me, you would have escaped all the disagreeable
things to which your nation is exposed."

Out of 18,000 persons who were deported from Khar-
put and Sivas, 350 arrived at Aleppo (consisting of
women and children); out of j^^^o^eported from Erze-
roum, only eleven — one sick boy, four girls and six
women-breached that town. A convoy of women and

— ■ ■ — — ---^ — — — — -; -.-

girls had to jwalk the__65 hours frojn_Kas-el-Ajn_to_
Aleppo, "along the railway line, notwithstanding the
fact that at the same time the railway carriages, which
had been used for the transport of soldiers, were return*-
ing empty. ]\Iohammedan travellers, who came along
this way, report that the roads are impassable owing to
th£jTi£rn^_coijoseslying unburied ^n both sjdes of the
roadV the srnell T)rwEich is poisoning the air. Of those
" remaining over, ''' who so far have not been sent further
on, 100-120 persons have died at Aleppo up to the pre-

CILICIA AM) NORTHERX SYRIA,

sent, in consequence of the hardships of the journey. Tlie
starving and emaciated women and children, on their
arrival at Aleppo, fell on the food like wild beasts. In
the case of many of them the digestive organs had
ceased to work ; after having devoured one or two spoon-
fuls they put the spoon aside. The Government alleges
that the deported persons recei\e food, init in the case
of the above-mentioned con\oy, which came from Khar-
put, a distribution of bread took place only once_jjX
three months.

The Government does not merely neglect to make any
provision for the people ; on the contrarv, it causes everv-
thing to be taken away from them. At Ras-el-Ain a
convoy of 200 girls and women arrived in a state of
complete nudity; their shoes, their chemises, evervthing,
in short, had been taken away from ihem, and thev were
made to walk for four days under the hot sun — tjie tem-
perature was_j22 degrees in the shade — in their condi-
tion of nakedness, jeered at and^derided by the soldiers
of their escort. Mr. X. told me that he himself had seen
a convoy, consisting of 400 women and children, in the
same state. Whenever the wretched exiles appealed to
the humanity of the officials, the replv was: " \\> have
strict^ orders fxom the Government to treat you in this,
wa^^_

At first the dead in Aleppo wer*:* brought to the ceme-
terv in the coffins provided by the Armenian Church.
This was done by " Hamals " (professional porters),
who received two piastres for each dead. When the
"Hamals" were unable to cope with the whole work,
the women themselves brought their dead to the ceme-
terv — the babies in their arms, tlie bigger children laid
on sacks and carried by four women, one at each corner.
I saw corpses carried to tlie cemetery across a donkey "s

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

back. A friend of mine saw a dead body tied to a stick,
which was carried by two men. Another friend saw a
cart drawn by oxen going to the cemetery with a full
load of corpses. The two-wheeled cart was too large
to pass the narrow cemetery-gate, whereupon the driver,
without any hesitation, turned it round and emptied it;
then he dragged the dead bodies to their respective
graves by the arms and legs. At the present moment
five or six carts are in use, which take the dead to the
cemetery. In one of the bans, which is called a hos-
pital, I saw on a Sunday something like 30 corpses
lying about in a yard, which was about 25 yards wide
and 50 yards long. About 20 had already been buried
on that day. The 30 corpses remained Iving there until
the evening. My wife got them carried away in the
darkness by engaging three "Hamals," to whom she
gave a medjidie (about 3s. 2d.) each. In the case of
one of the corpses the skin adhered to the hands of the
"Hamals," showing how far the process of decomposi-
tion had already gone. Dying persons and persons
suffering from serious illnesses, about 1,000 altogether,
were lying among the dead, under the burning sun.
The W'hole scene was more terrible than anything I
had ever seen, even than the shooting of the 24 people
at Marash in the summer, which has been described
above. Nearly all the people suffered from diarrhoea.
Channels had been dug in the ground within the
courtyard, by the side of which the dying were placed,
with their backs towards the channe), so that the empty-
ings of their bowels could pass into it at once. When-
ever anyone died, he was removed, and his melancholy
place was filled by another. It happened frequently
that persons who were carried away as dead gave signs
of life when they were near the grave ; they were dragged
aside, until it was certain that death had supervened.

CILICIA AND yORTHERX SYRIA.

One young girl recovered so far that she could be
carried back to the town, and one person who had been
buried in the evening was found sitting on his grave
the next morning. Several corpses had been thrown
into one grave, and he was on the top; in the twilight
only a thin layer of earth had been put over him. In
Tel-Abiad Mr. — saw open graves with 20-30 corpses.
The graves were filled up with earth when it was no
longer possible to put any more corpses into them.
Mr. — told me that it was impossible to go near these
places owing to the stench, and yet the deported persons
had to encamp in the immediate vicinity. Out of 35
orphans who were kept in one room at Aleppo, 30 died
in a week for want of nourishment. Mr. — says that
on his journey to this place he saw corpses everywhere
on the road, and that a Kurd boasted to him of having
killed 14 children.

On Sunday, the 12th August, 1915, I had to go to
the station of the Damascus railwav at Aleppo, and
was able to see the loading into cattle trucks of about
1,000 women and children. With us in Germanv the
cattle are allowed more space than those wretched
people; go per cent, of them had death written on their
faces. There were people among them who literally
had no time allowed thcni for dying. On the previous
evening a convov had been taken away, and on the next
morning the dead bodies of two children, about half
grown up, were found, who had died during the load-
ing of the trucks and had been left lying on the platform.

On the 13th September, igi.S, the following tele-
graphic order from the Commander-in-Chief of the 4th
Arm\', Djemal Pasha, was brought lo tin* notice of the
inhabitants: "All photographs, which may have been^
taken bv the engineers or other officers of the Bagdad I
Railwav Construction Company relating to the convoys J

GERMANY, TURKEY AXD ARMENIA,

of Armenians, are to be delivered within 48 hours,
together with the negatives, to the MiHtary Commis-
sariat of the Bagdad Railway at Aleppo. Any contra-
vention of this order will be punished bv court-martial."

Several times I saw women and children search for
scraps of food in the dustheaps : anything that was
found was devoured mimediately. I saw the children
gnawing at raw bones which they had picked up in
corners used as urinals.

On the road between Marash and Aintab the Moham-
medan population of a village wanted to distribute water
and bread among a convoy of 100 families, but the
soldiers escorting the convoy prevented this. Fpur-
fifths of the deporte4_£gIsoji§__are_women and children;
the majority of the men have been called__up for the
Armv.

Twenty thousand persons who had been deported by
way of Marash were not allowed to pass on to Aintab
and obtain supplies of food, though the direct caravan
route goes through Aintab.

At Ras-el-Ain there are at present about 1,500 women
and children, the only survivors out of several thou-
sands, who, together with their husbands and fathers,
were deported from Kharput and the surrounding coun-
try. Among these 1,500 persons there_|s^jiot__a single
maleoyer the age of lo-i^j^ars. These people, healthy
or sick, are left lying from morning till evening in the
sun without food and without protection against a tem-
perature of logj degrees in the shade, and they are
in the arbitrary power of their guards. Mr. L. — who
during the last month had, in conversation with me,
used the expression "Armenian rabble " — spoke liter-
ally as follows : " 1 am not a man who is easily touched,
but after what I have seen at Kas-el-AJn I^can not keep
the tears away. I did not think itj20ssj]2le_dTa^ su^

CILICIA AXD XORTHERX SYRIA.

acts of ill-treatment and violence, OLUr^^jj2g__alj_j;iiles
ofhumanitxY could_t)e perpetrated in ouTj:entury."

A " Tchaoush " (Sergeant-AIajor) of the name of
Suleiman took 18 women and girls and sold them jto,
Arabs, charging 2-1, mejidies (6s. 4d. — gs. 6d.) for
each of them. A Turkish police-commissary said
to me: " \\\' have lost all count of the numbers of
women and girls who were taken awav by the Arabs
and Kurds, either by force or with the connivance of
the Government. This time we have carried out our
operations against the Armenians according to our
h e art's desire ; n ( )t one out of ten hasJeenJeft ajpo ri g

the li\inp"."

- — ^^____ — -«^

\Vhile I am writing this down, mv wife has returned
from a walk into the town, and reports tearfully that
she met a convoy of over 800 Armenians, all bare-footed,
with torn clothes, carr\ing their scanty possessions on
their backs, together \\ith their babies.

In Besne the whole population, consisting of ijSoo
souls, principally women and children, were expatri-
ated; it was alleged tiiat thev were to be deported to
Ourfa. When they reached the Gciksu, a tributary of
the Euphrates, they were compelled to take their clothes
off, and thereupon they were all massacred and_ thrown
J n tj;) th£_jiyer .

On a single day latterly 170 corpses were observed
drifting down the luiphrates, on other days 50-60. Mr.
A., an engineer, saw 40 corpses in the course of one
ride. Those which are stranded on the river bank are
devoured bv the dogs, those on sandbanks in mid-
stream b\- the \iihures.

The .'ib()\ ('-mentioned 800 Armenians had been de-
ported from the district of Marash. They had been
tohl that thev would be taken to Aintab, and they were
to pro\ :de themselves with food for two days. When

/ /

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

they reached the neighbourhood of Aintab the soldiers
said : ' ' We have made a mistal^e, we were meant to go
to Nissibin." No food was supplied by the authorities,
and no opportunities for the purchase of provisions were
given. At Nissibin the word went round: "We came
the wrong way; we were meant to go to Mumbidj."
There again the soldiers said: "We came the wrong
way; we were meant to go to Bab." In this manner
they had to wander abqu^for seventeen^ days, aban-
doned to the arbitrary pleasure of their escort. During
the whole time no provisions Avere supplied by the
Government, and their scanty possessions had to be
given away in exchange for bread.

One mother, whose eldest daughter was taken away
. by force, threw herself in despair into the Euphrates
{ with her two remaining children.

Said, an emigrant from Tripoli, who had been a
groom in Mr. L.'s stables for four years with a monthly
salary of 400 piastres (about £3), enlisted as_a_yolunteer
for the war, in order to be able, according to his j)wn
statement, to Take palTin the slaughter of a few Arm.e-
nians. A nice house in an Armenian village near Ourfa
was~promised him (he hinted) by way of reward.

Two Circassians who were in the service of Mr. E.,
a storekeeper, enlisted as volunteers for the war on the
same ground.

The head of a Circassian village community, Tchor-
dekli, speaking of the war volunteers from his village,
said to an acquaintance of mine: " Ev yikmak itchun
giderler " (TlT^ygo_2n__order to nnnjvliole families).

At Arab PounaTa^Turkish Major, who spoke German,
expressed himself as follows: " I and my brother took
possession of a young girl at Ras-el-Ain, who had been
left on the road. We are very angry with the Germans

CILICIA AXD NORTHERN SYRIA.

for doing such things/' When I contradicted them,
they said : "The Chief of the General Staff is a German;
von der Goltz is Commander-in-Chief, and ever so many
German officers are in our Army. Our Koran does not
permh_suchtreatnient as the Armenians have to suffer
noiL\''* At NussTeHa MoTfanTrhedan inspector niade
similar remarks to a cleric. When I taxed him with
this utterance in the presence of others, he said: "It
is not only I who say this; everyone will tell vou the
same tale."

At Biredjik the prisons are filled every day and
emptied over night. Tell Armen, a village of J^ooo
inhabitants, was raided, the inhabitants were massacred,
thrown dead or alive into the wells, or burnt. Major
von Mikusch was a witness of the devastation. A
German cavalrjy^captain saw un buried corpses between
Diyarbekir and Ourfa on both sides of the road, with
their throats cut. Innumerable unburied corpses of
children were seen on the way by Mr. S.

At Tel-Abiad seventeen dead or dying persons were
left behind near the station, on the departure of a con-
voy. Two railway officials afterwards had all seventeen
buried.

All the convoys of Armenians have for the last few
days been taken into these parts. The statement made
bv Mr. X. is entirely in accord with the reply given to
me bv the Chairman of the Deportation Commission,
when I made an application in favour of four Armenian
children: "You do not grasp our intentions; we want
to destroy the Armenian name. ]iisJ^jis_Gcrmany li'ill
only let Germans ejcist, so ivc Turks will only let J J
Turks ,''

* The italics are the Editor's.
t The italics are the Editor's.

10. Narrative of a German Official of the Bagdad
Railway.

When the inhabitants of the Cilician villages left
their homes, many of them still had donkeys for rid-
ing or carrying packs, but the soldiers escorting the
convoys would only allow the " Katerdjis " (donkey-
drivers) to ride on these animals, saying that strict orders
had been given that no deported persons, whether male
or female, might ride. In the case of the convoy start-
ing from Hadjin the " Katerdjis " simply took all the
pack animals which they suspected of carrying money
or valuables straight to their own villages. Other
animals, which the people had taken with them, were
taken away from them by force or purchased for prices
so absurdly low that it would hardly have made any
difference if they had been given away gratis. A
woman whose family is known to me sold 90 sheep
for a hundred piastres, which at any other time would
have realised about T£6o to £70; in other words, she
had to sell ninety animals for the proper price of one
animal. The villagers of Shar had received permis-
sion to take away their oxen, carts and pack animals.
Near Gokpunar they were forced to leave the carriage
road and to take the shorter footpath which crosses the
mountains. XllSZ-Jl^iJ^ march on^ without any food ,
^or thejrjourneyj)r_othe£ec|uipment. The escort simply
said that these were their orclers.

CILICIA AXD y CRT HERN SYRIA.

At the beginning each deported person received from
the Government one kilogram (2 lbs.) of bread per month
(not per day). They lived on the provisions which
they had taken with them. Small sums of money were
afterwards paid to them. I was told of about 30 persons
who had formerly been in good positions in the Circas-
sian village of Bumbudj (Mumbidj, on the ruins of the
ancient Bambyke), ij days' journey from Aleppo, who
had received 20 piastres_Jn^thiiitx_.days — not per lie 2^4?
but the 30 between them. 1 hat meant a pennv _a
rnonTh each. About four hundred^ barefooted women,
'eacTr\v1t?i one chiM on her arm, one child on her back
(often enough a dead one) and one held bv the hand,
passed through Marash during the first days. The
Armenians of Marash — who afterwards were them--
selves deported — purchased £30 (Turkish) worth of
shoes to silpply those who passed through the town.
Between Marash and Aintab the Mohammedan popu-
lation in a Turkish village wished to give water and
bread to a con\o\' of about 100 families. The soldiers
refused to permit this. The American mission and the
Armenians of Aintab — who later on^ere also Reported
— managed to bring bread and nioncv during the night
to the convoys which passed Aintab, and which totalled
about 20^000 p>ersoins. mosllv women and children.
These were the villagers n{ the Sandjak of Marash. The
convovs were not allowed to enter Marash, but en-
camped in the open. The American missionaries found
it possible to provision them thus by night as far as
Nisib (nine hours to the south-east of Aintab, on the
way to the Euphrates).

While on the march the deported Armenians wtT<' at
first robbed of their ready money, and afterwards of all
their possessions. Adeported Protj^stant minister sa^y
T£43 being taken away TrorrrTvnT' fa m i 1 valiTr £ 2!

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

another. This minister was himself newly married, and
was compelled to leave his young wife at Hadjin,
expecting her first child. Four-fifths of the deported
persons are women and children. Three-fifths of them
are barefooted. A former inhabitant of Hadjin who
is known to me personally and who had a fortune of
at least T£ 15,000 had, like everybody else, been robbed
of his clothes, and clothes had to be begged for him
here. The deported Armenians are specially troubled
by the fact that they are unable to bury their dead.
They are left dying anywhere on the road. The women
often carry their dead children for days on their backs.
At Bab, ten hours to the east of Aleppo, those who came
through were lodged provisionally for a week or two,
but they were not allowed to retrace their steps to bury
the companions who had died on the w^ay.

Thehardest fate is that of the w^omen who are con-
fined jon the way. They are hardly allowed sufficient
time to bring their child into the world. One poor
woman gave birth to twins during the night. In the
morning she had to march on, carrying the two newly-
born children on her back. After a two hours' march
she collapsed. She had to put the children on the ground
under a bush, and the soldiers compelled her to walk on
with her companions. Another woman was confined
during the march and was forced to proceed on her
march immediately; she fell down dead. A third woman
was surrounded by ladies belonging to the American
mission, while she was confined in the neighbourhood
of Aintab. They only succeeded in obtaining permis-
sion for her to ride an animal, and she continued her
journey in this manner, holding the child in her lap
with a few rags round it. These cases were witnessed
merely on the section of road between -Marash and Ain-
tab. At Aintab the people clearing up a ban, which

CILICIA AXV yORTHERN SYRIA,

an hour before had been left by a convoy, , found a
new-born child. In the Tash-Han, in Marash, three
new-born children were found buried in dung.

Innumerable corpses of children are found lying un-
buried on the road. A Turkish Major, who returned
with me three days ago, said that many children were
abandoned by their mothers on the wav because they
could not feed them any more. Older children are taken
away from their mothers by the Turks. The ^lajor, as
well as each of his brothers, had an Armenian child with
him; they intended to educate them as Mohammedans.
One of the children speaks German. It must be one
of the inmates of a German orphanage. It is thought
that about 300 of the women who passed through here
were confined on the way,.

In this place a family, in its dire poverty and despair,
sold a girl of the age of 18 years to a Turk for Tc£6. The
husbands of most of the women had been called up for
service in the Army. Anyone who does not obey the
summons calling him up is hanged or shot; there were
seven cases lately at Marash. The conscripts are, how-
ever, generally used merelv for mending the roads, and
are not allowed to carry arms. Those who return home
find their houses empty. Two days ago I met an Arme-
nian soldier at Djerabulus, who had come from Jeru-
salem, having obtained leave to visit his native village,
Geben (situate between Zeitoun and Sis). I have known
this man. for years. Here he heard that his mother, his
wife and three children had been deported into the
desert. All inquiries as to the fate of his family were
fruitless.

Corpses drifting down the luiplirates have been
observed every day during the last 28 days, pairs of
theiiT_be[ng tied Jcjgether back to back, while otiiers are
tied three to eight together bv_the_arms. A Turkish

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

Colonel who is stationed at Djerabulus was asked
why he did not have the corpses buried, whereupon
he replied that he had no orders to do so, and that,
moreover, it was impossible to ascertain whether they
were Mohammedans or Christians, as their sexual
organs had been cut off. (They would bury Moham-
medans, but not Christians.) The corpses which had
been stranded on the shore were eaten by the dogs.
Others which had stuck on the sandbanks became the
prey of the vultures. A German, in the course of one
ride, saw six pairs of corpses drifting down stream.
A German cavalry captain said he had, in the course
of a ride from Diyarbekir to Ourfa, seen innumerable
unburied corpses on both sides of the road, all corpses
of j^un£jiT^nj\vhose throaLs_had been cut. (These were
the Armenians called up for military service ^nd^ iTsed^
for mendingjjie roads.) A Turkish Pasha, addressing
a distinguished Armenian, expressed himself as follows :
'' ^iJ^^^kful, if at least you find a grave in the desert;
many of jx)u have^to^o without thTs7^ ^~^^

Net on*^ half of the'cTepofte^ p^efsons remain alive.
The day before yesterday one woman died here in the
station yard; yesterday there were 14 deaths, and this
morning a further 10. A Protestcint minister from
Hadjin said to a Turk at Osmanieh : "Not one half
of these deported persons remain alive." The Turk
replied: "That is what we are after."

It ought not to be overlooked that there are some
?^Johammedans who disapprove of the horrible deeds
done aeainst the Armenians. A Mohammedan Sheikh,
a person of great authority at Aleppo, said in my pre- '
sence : " When I hear talk about the treatrner.t of the
Armeni^jjs, I am^ashame^jof being a TiIrkT^

Ajivone who wishes to remain aH^ is compelled to
go over to_Islam. In order to promote~tETs, isolated

CILICIA AXD XORTHERN SYRIA.

families are in certain cases sent to purely Mohani-
medan villages.

The number of deported persons who have passed
through here and at Aintab has so far reached about
50,000. Xine-tenihs of them were told on the evening
Eefore th'eTr deportation that they had to start in the
rnorning. The majority of the convovs go through
Ourfa, the minority through Aleppo. The first men-
tioned take the road for Mosul, the others for I)er-el-
Zor. The authorities say that they are to be settled
there, but those who escape the knife will certain!}^
perijh of hurLg£j. Some 10,000 persons have reached
'Der-el-Zor on the Euphrates; no news has so far been
received of the others. As regards those who were sent
towards Mosul, it is said that they are to be settled at
a distance of about 16 miles from the railway; this prob-
ably means that the\'_,are to be drLven into the desejt,
}yhere__dieiji_extir^ witnesses.

What I have written down is only a small fraction of
all the cruelties which have been practised here during
the last two months, and which assume larger propor-
tions every day. It is onlv a fraction of the things
which I have seen with my own eye.s and heard from
acquaintances and friends who were eye-witnesses. I
am prepared at anv time to mention the dates of the
events and to give the names of the witnesses.

«5

11. THE AMANUS PASSES.

Statements by two Swiss Ladies, resident in Turkey.
Communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief.

(a) Report by Fraulein M., dated i6th November, 1915.

I have just returned from a ride on horseback through
the Baghtche-Osmania plain, v^here thousands of exiles
are lying out in the fields and on the roads, without any
shelter and completely at the mercy of all manner of
brigands. Last night, about 12 o'clock, a little camp
was suddenly attacked. There were between 50 and 60
persons in it. I found men and women badly wounded
— bodies slashed ^2g^^> broken skulls and^terrible knife-
wounds. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so
T could change their blood-soaked things and then
bring them to the next inn, where they were nursed.
Many of them were so much exhausted from the enor-
mous loss of blood that they died, I fear, in the mean-
time. In another camp we found thirty or forty thou-
sand Armenians. I was able to distribute bread among
tHern^! Desperate and half-starved, they fell upon it;
several times I was almost pulled off my horse. A
number of corpses were lying about unburied, and it
was only by bribing the gendarmes that we could induce
them to allow their burial. Usually the Armenians were

CI Lie I A AND NORTHERN SYRIA.

not allowed to perform the last offices of love for their
relatives. Dreadful epidemics of typhoid-fever broke
out everywhere; there was a victmi of it practically in
every third tent. Nearly everything had to be trans-
ported on foot; men, women and children carried their
few belongings on their backs. I often saw them break
down under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driv-
ing them forward with the butt-ends of their rifles, even
sometimes with their bayonets. IJlgYgjJ^ssed bleeding
wounds on the bodies of women that had_been caused
bythe^eJbayanetJiiriLSts. ^lany children had lost their
parents and were now without any support. Three
hours' distance from Osmania two dying men were lying
absolutely alone in the fields. They had been here for
days without food or even a drop of water, after their
companions had continued their march. They had
grown as thin as skeletons, and onlv their heavy breath-
ing showed that there was still life in them. Unburied
w^men and children were lying in_the_ditches. The
Turkish officials in Osmania were very obliging; I suc-
ceeded in obtaining many concessions from them, and
manv hardships were remedied. T obtained carriages
to pick up the dying people and bring them in to town.

(b) Report by Friiulein O. on a visit to the exiles' camp
at Mamouret, 26th November, 19 15.

We saw thousands of tiny low tents, made of thin
material. An innumerable crowd of people, of all ages
and every class of society ! They were looking at us
partly in surprise, partly with the indifference of desper-
ation. A group of hungry, begging children and women
were at our heels: " Hanoum, bread! Hanoum, I am
hungry; we have had nothing to cat to-day or yester-
day!"

You had only to look at the greedy, pale, suffering

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

faces to know that their words were true. About i,8oo
loaves could be procured. Everybody fell greedily
upon them; the priests who were charged with the dis-
tribution of the bread had almost to light for their lives;
but it was by no means sufficient, and no further bread
was to be had. A crowd of hungry people stood im-
ploringlv before us. The gendarmerie had to keep them
back by force. Suddenly the order for departure was
given. If anybody was slow in striking their tent, it
was torn down with the bayonet. Three carriages and
a number of camels were held in readiness. A few
wealthv people quickly hired the carriages, while others
less well-to-do loaded a came) with their things. The
wailing of the poor, the old and the sick filled the air :
*' We can't go any further, let us die here." But they
had to go on. We were at least able to pay for a camel
for some of them, and to give small change to others
in order to buy bread at the next station ; clothes, sewn
at the Mission Station in Adana, were also distributed.
Soon the immense procession was moving on. wSome
of the most miserable were left behind (others rested
there__ah:eadvin_tjie_jie3 As many as

200 — destitute, old or sick — are said to have waited there
for help to come. The misery was increased a hundred-
fold by the severe rain and coldTthat had set in. Every-
where convoys left dying people in their track — little
children and invalids perishing. Besides all this the
epidemic_was_spreadj^^ more and more.

It had rained three days and three nights; even in
our houses we were acutely sensible of the cold and
damp. As soon as possible, I set out on my way. About

CILICIA AND yORTHERN SYRIA.

200 families had been left behind at Mamouret. They
were unable to proceed through exhaustion or illness.
In this rain the soldiers, loo, felt no inclination to rouse
them up and drive them on, so they were_jyjn^a^u^ in
what nij^ht hav^e been_a_Ja.ke. There was not a single
dry thread left in thejj ragged bedding^ XTany women
had their feet frost-bitten; they were~quite black and in
a state for amputation. The wailing and groaning was
horrible. Everywhere there were dying people in their
last agonies or dead ixidies Iving in front of the tents.
It was only by " bakshish " that the soldiers could be
persuaded to bury them. It seemed a comfort to them
w'hen we came with dry clothes; they could change their
things and get some bread and small change. Then
I drove in a carriage along the whole route to Islohia.
Though I had seen much distress before, the objects and
the scenes 1 saw here defy description. A fraillv-built
woman was sitting by the roadside with her bedding on
her back, and a young baby strapped on at the top of
it; in Ikt arms she had a two-year-old child — its eyes
were dim and it was at its last gasp. The woman had
broken down in her distress and was weeping in a heart-
breaking way. I took her with me to the next camp,
where the child died; then I took care of her and sent
her on her way. She was so grateful. The whole
carriage was packed with bread. I kept on distribut-
ing .'ill the time. We had three or four opportunities
of busing fresh supplies. These thousands of loaves
were a great help to us. I was also able to hire some
hundreds of animals to help the poor people forward.
The camp at Islohia itself is the saddest thing I have
evvr seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies
lav unburied. I counted .'^5, and in another place 22^
in the inimediai(» neighbourhood of the tents of those
who were down with \ irulent dysentery. The filth in

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

and around these tents was something indescribable.
On one single day the burial committee buried as many
as 580 people. Men were fighting for bread like hungry
wolves. One saw hideous scenes. With what timidity
and apathy these poor people often stared at me, as
though they wondered where this assistance came from !
For some weeks now many camps have been provided
daily with bread. Of course, everything has to be done
as unobtrusively as possible. We are so thankful to
God that we may at least do something.

(d) Letter from Fraulein M. to Mr. N., dated 13th
December, 191 5, on the way to Aleppo.

I should have written long before this, but during these
last weeks I have been more on the road than at home,
and the work in the camps was often so urgent that I
could not find time for anything else. I suppose you
have had, in the meantime, the receipt for the 200 liras
you sent me. Many thanks for the quick response. I
only wish you could see these poor people yourself;
you would get an impression of the absolutely dreadful
need and distress that these camps conceal. It is simply
indescribable; one has to have seen it oneself. So far I
have had no difficulty whatever; on the contrary, the
officials here are most obliging, and grateful for every-
thing we are doing for the poor people. You will find
some reports enclosed which Miss O. copied for you as
well ; they will give you an idea of what we are doing
here. Up to the present we have worked in four camps,
twelve hours distant. We were often able to distribute
about 10 to 20 liras* worth of bread a day; besides this,
we gave flour, clothes and nirra to many sick people,
to help them on the long journey. Sometimes it hap-
pened that in some places we did not have nearly enough

CILICIA AND XORTHERN SYRIA.

bread — in such cases we provided the people with money
to buy bread at the next bakery along the route.

Now we are on our way to Aleppo, and Miss O. will
stay there some weeks, D.\\, to prepare everything for
another journey to Der-el-Zor. I intend to come back
soon, since there is still much work to do on the
Mamouret-Islohia route, and it seems to me that we
ought not to give up the work among the distressed sa
long as any of them are left in this place, for if we did
they would absolutely die of starvation. Judging by
our recent experience, we shall need about 300 to 400
liras a month. Dr. L. told me to send you word about
this, because I should get the money from you. It
would be better not to stop th(^ work for lack of money,
because the poor people would suffer by it. If, how-
ever, you think that less money ought to be spent, or
that the whole work should be given up, please send
me a telegram in time, so that we may stop doing it.
If not, will you please be so kind as to send me the
amount. To-day I have asked you b\ wire to send me
400 liras — 200 for Mamouret and 200 for Islohia-Hassan-
Beyli.

I hope vou are well. W'e got a message that Dr. L.
is down with tvphoid. I hope that God will soon give
him new strength. Friiulein O. and I both send you
our best wishes.

D. ALEPPO.

12. '*A word to the accredited representatives of
the German people," by Ur. Martin Niepage,
Higher Grade Teacher at the German Tech-
nical School at Aleppo, at present at Werni-
gerode.

On my return in September, 1915, from Beirut to
Aleppo, after a three months' holiday, I heard, to my
horror, that a new period of Armenian massacres had
been initiateZTI I was told~that thev were far niore

terrible than those under Abdul Hamid ; and that their
object was to exterminate, root and branch, the intelli-
gt^nt, prosperous and pro^ressne nation of the Arme-
nians and to transfer their property to Turkish hands.
^'At first I was unable to believe such a monstrous
report. I was told that in various quarters of Aleppo
there were masses of half-famished human beings,
the survivors of so-called "deportation-convoys," and
that in order to cover the extermination of the Arme-
nian people with a political cloak, military reasons had
been put forward, which were alleged to necessitate the
expulsion of the Armenians from the homes they had
occu]Died__for_oyer^2opo year^ aTid_rheir_deportation
intojhe Arabian Desert. It was also said that indi-
vidual Armenians had lent themselves to acts of espion-
age.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

After having investigated the facts and made en-
quiries on all sides, I came to the conclusion that the
accusations against the Armenians related in all cases
to trifling matters, which were taken as a pretext to
slay ten thousand innocent persons for one who was
guilty, to commit the most savage outrages against
women and children, and to carrv on a war of starva-
tion against the deported persons with the object of
destroying the whole nation.

In order to test the judgment which I had formed
from the information I had obtained, I visited every
place in the town in which there were any Armenians
who had formed part of one of the convoys and had
been left behind. I found in dilapidated caravansaries
(bans) heaps of dead bodies, many of which were in
an advanced state of decomposition, with living persons
interspersed among them who were all near to the agony
of death. In other yards I found heaps of sick and
famished persons who were absolutely uncared for.
Near the German Technical School, of which I am
one of the higher grade teachers, there were four bans
of this class with 700-800 deported persons who were
starving. We, the teachers at the school, and our
pupils had to pass them every day. Through the open
windows we saw, each time we went out, the emaciated
forms, covered with rags, of these miserable beings.
Our school children had every morning almost to touch
the two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen which they had to
pass in the narrow streets, and in which every day 8-10
rigid corpses w^re carted away without coflins and with-
out covering of any sort, the arms and legs protruding
from the cart.

After having been a witness of these scenes during
several days, I thought it my duty to draft the follow-
ing report-- —

ALEPFO.

" As teachers at the German Technical School at
Aleppo we take leave humbly to submit the following
report : —

" W^ deem it our duty to call attention to the fact
that our educational work will lose its moral founda-
tion and the esteem of the natives, if the German
Government is not in a position to prevent the brutality
with which the wives and children of slaughtered Arme-
nians are treated in this place. The convoys which, on
the departure of the exiles from their homes in Upper
Armenia, consisted of 2,000-3,000 persons — men, women
and children — arrive here in the south with a remnant
of only two or three hundred survivors. The men are
killed on the way, the women and children, excepting
those of unattractive appearance and those who are quite
old f>r quite voung, are first abused by Turkish soldiers
and officers, and then brought into Turkish or Kurd
villages, where thev have to go over to Islam. As
regards the remnant of the caravans, every effort is
made to reduce them by hunger and thirst. Even when
a river is passed, those who are d\'ing of thirst are not
permitted to drink. As their onlv food a small cjuan-
titv of flour is strewn on ihcir hands as a daily ration;
this thev greedilv lick off, but its only effect is to delay
death from starvation for a little while longer.

" Opposite to the German Technical School at Aleppo
in which we do our work as teachers, a remnant of some
of these convovs is Iving in one of (he hans; there are
about 400 emaciated forms; about 100 l^oys and girls,
from five to seven vears old, are among them. Most of
them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. On
entering the vard one has the impression of coming
into a lunatic asylum. When food is brought to them,
one notices that thev h.'i\c lost the habit «»f eating. The
stomach, weakened bv month.s of siar\aiion. has ceased

<)5

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

to be able to receive food. Any bread that is given to
them is laid aside with an air of indifference. They
just lie there quietly, waiting for death.

" How can we teachers read German fairy tales with
our pupils, or, indeed, the story of the Good Samaritan
in the Bible? How can we ask them to decline and
conjugate indifferent words, while round about in the
neighbouring yards the starving brothers and sisters
of our Armenian pupils are succumbing to a lingering
death ? In these circumstances our educational work
flies in the face of all true morality and becomes a
mockery of human feeling.

"And those poor creatures who in their thousands
have been driven through the town and the neighbour-
ing districts into the desert; nearly all of them are
women and children, and what becomes of them ?
They are driven on from place to place, until the
thousands dwindle into hundreds and until the hun-
dreds dwindle into insignificant remnants. And these
remnants are again driven on until the last survivors
have ceased to live. Then only the final goal of the
migration has been reached. Then the wanderers have
arrived at ' the new homes assigned to the Armenians,*
as the newspapers express it.

* Ta'alhn el aleman ^ {' that is the teaching of the
Germans ') says the simple Turk, when asked about
the authors of these measures.* The educated Moslenis
are convinced that, though the German people may dis-
approve of such horrors, the German Government is
taking no steps to prevent them, out of consideration
for its Turkish Allies.

"Mohammedans of more refined feelings, Turks as
well as Arabs, shake their heads disapprovingly; they

* The italics are the Editor's.

ALEPPO.

do not even conceal their tears when, in the passage of
a convoy of deported Armenians tlirough the town,
they see Turkish soldiers infjictingf blows with heavy
sticks on women in advanced pregnancv or dving per-
sons who cannot drag themselves any further. They
cannot imagine thai their (lOvernment has ordered these
cruelties, and ascribe all excesses to the £uili of the
Germans, who during the war are held to he the teachers
of the Turks in all matters * Even the Mollahs declare
in the Mosques that it was not the Sublime Porte but
the German officers who had ordered the ill-treatment
and annihilation of the Armenians.

" The things which in this place have been before
everybody's eyes during many months, must indeed
remain a blot on Germany's shield of honour in the
memory of Oriental nations.

" Many educated persons, who do not wish to be
obliged to give up their faith in the character of the
Germans whom they have hitherto respected, explain
the matter to themselves in the following manner: they
say, ' The German nation probably knows nothing of
the horrible massacres which are on foot at the present
time against the native Christians all over Turkey.
How is it possible otherwise, having regard to the
veracitv of the German nation, that articles should
appear in German papers showing complete ignorance
of all these events, and only stating that some individual
Armenians were deservedly shot by martial law as spies
and traitors?' Others say: ' Perhaps the hands of the
German Government are tted by some convention regu-
lating the limits of its competence, or intervention does
not appear opportune at the present moment.'

* The italics arc the Editor's.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

'' It is known to us that the Embassy at Constant
tinople was informed of all these events by the German
Consulates, As, notwithstanding this fact, nothing has
been altered in the system of dciyorfation, our conscience
compels us to make this report,"*

At the time I composed this report, the German
Consul at Aleppo was represented by his colleague
from Alexandretta, Consul Hoffmann. The latter told
me that the Embassy at Constantinople was fully in*
formed of what was happening in the country by
repeated reports from the Consulates at Aleppo, Alex-
andretta and Mosul, but that a report about the things
which I had seen with my own eyes would be welcome
as a supplement to the existing records, and as filling
in the details. He promised to send my report by a
sure agency to the Embassy at Constantinople. I there-
upon drafted a report in the desired manner, giving a
detailed description of the state of things in the han
opposite our school. The Consul wished to add some
photographs which he himself had taken in the han.
They revealed heaps of corpses, between which young-
children, still alive, were crawling about or relieving
nature.

In this revised form the report was signed not only
by me, but also by my colleagues, Dr. Graeter (higher
grade teacher) and Frau Marie Spiecker. The Director
of our Institution, Herr Huber, also added his name
and the following words : " The report of my colleague,
Dr. Niepage, is not in any w^ay exaggerated. For many
weeks we have lived here in an air poisoned with sick-
ness and the stench of corpses. Only the hope for a

The italics are the Editor's.

ALEPPO.

speedy change of things makes it possible for us to
continue our work."*

The hoped-for change of things did not occur. I
then thought of resigning my post as higher grade
teacher at the German l^echnical School, stating as
the ground for my decision that it appeared senseless
and morally indefensible to give instruction and educa-
tion as a representative of luiropean culture, and at the
same time to have to sit with folded hands while the
Government of the country abandoned persons belong-
ing to the same nation as our pupils to an agonizing
death by starvation. But those around me, as well as
the Director of the Institution, Herr Huber, dissuaded
me from this intention. My attention was called to the
fact that It would be useful for us to remain in the coun-
try as eye-witnesses of the events which were occurring.
Perhaps our presence would have the effect of inducing
the Turks, out of consideration for us Germans, to
behave somewhat more humanely towards their unfor-
tunate victims. I see now that I have far too long
remained a silent witness of all these wrongs.

Nothing was improved by our presence, and we our-
selves were able to give only very little help. Frau
Spieckcr, our energetic, brave fellow teacher, purchased
some soap, and the lice-covered bodies of the women
and children who were still alive in our neighbourhood
were washed and freed from vermin (there were no men
left). Frau Spiecker engaged some women, who pre-
pared soup for those of the patients who were still able
to eat. I mvself distributed, every evening for six
weeks, among the dying children the contents of two

* The remarks of this Headmaster, who only calls attention to
the personal inconvenience suffered by the teachers in the school,
is in sin«-ular contrast with the impassioned feelings of pity for
the Arnunians expressed and undoubtedly felt by the author of
the report. — Editok's Notf:.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

pails filled with tea, cheese and soaked bread. But
when the hunger-typhus or spotted-typhus spread into
the town from these charnel-houses, we succumbed,
together with five of our colleagues, and had to stop
our relief work. Moreover, no help given to the exiles
who came to Aleppo was of any use. We could only
afford those condemned to death a few slight alleviations
of their death agony.

What we saw here in Aleppo with our own eyes was,
in fact, only the last scene of the great tragedy of the
extirpation of the Armenians; only a trifling fraction
of the horrors which were being perpetrated simultane-
ously in the other Turkish provinces. The engineers
of the Bagdad railway, on their return from the section
under construction, and German travellers, who on their
way had met the caravans of the deported, spoke of still
more abominable horrors. Many of these men could
eat nothing for days; the impression of the loathsome
things they had seen was too overpowering.

One of them (Herr Greif, of Aleppo) reported that
heaps of £orpses_ofjvaolated_jvmm^^ Iving naked

on the railway_emj>ankment near Abiad^nd Ras^eT-Ain.~^
I n_th£case6rniar^ sticks had been driveiTlintoThe
anus. Another^ (Herr Spiecker, of Aleppo) saw Turks
tie Armenian men together, fire several volleys of small
shot with fowling pieces into the human mass, and go
off laughing, while their victims slowly perished in
frightful convulsions. Other men were sent rolling
down steep slopes with their hands tied behind their
backs. Below there were women, who slashed those
who had rolled down with knives until they were dead.
A Protestant minister who two years ago had given a
most cordial reception to my colleague. Dr. Graeter,
had his finger nails torn out.

I GO

ALEPPO.

The German Consul at Mosul said in my presence
in the German Club at Aleppo that he had seen so
many cJiUdren^s hands lying_Jiacked off on his ivay
from Mosul to Aleppo, that one could have paved the
road with them*

I n J h c_G e r man Hospital at Ourfa tlierc is also a little
girl, both of whose hands have been hacked off. PTerr
ttolstein, the German Consul at Mosul, also saw, in
the neighbourhood of an Arab village, shortly before
reaching Aleppo, shallow graves with freshly-buried
Armenian corpses. The Arab villagers asserted that
they had killed these Armenians by order of the Govern-
ment. One of them said proudly that he personally
had killed eight.

In many houses in Aleppo, inhabited by Christians,
I found Armenian girls hidden away, whom some acci-
dental circumstances had enabled to escape death ; they
had either remained behind in a state of exhaustion,
having been taken for dead when their convoy was
driven on; or some European had found an oppor-
tunity to purchase these miserable beings for a few
shillings from the Turkish soldier \\Ji^JLLaiIast_v_iqlated
them. All these girls are in a state of mental collapse.
Many had been compelled to l^ook on while their parents
had their throats ciij_. I know some of these pitiable
creatures, who for months were unable to utter a word,
and even now cannot be coaxed into a smile. A girl of

* The italics are the Editor's. The fact which comes out
clearly in several of the documents included in this pamphlet,
that many Gorman Consuls reported indixnantly about these
horrors, and that thfir reports were left unheeded, throws a
lurid li>fht on the attitudf itf thr riornum riovemment. — Editor's
NoTK. •

lOi

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

the age of_i4 was received^ hrto_the home of the depot-
managei^ofjhe Bagdad railway at_Aleppo7lTerflvrause.
The child had been raped so many times by Turkish
soldiers^ during one night thatshe had completely lost
lier reason. I saw her tossing on her pillow in delirium
with hot lips, and I found it difficult to make her drink
some water.

A German who is known to me witnessed the follow-
ing incident in the neighbourhood of Ourfa; hundreds
of Christian peasant women were forced by Turkish
soldiers to take off all their clothes. For the amuse-
ment of the soldiers they had to drag themselves
through the desert for days together in a temperature
of 40° Centigrade, until their skin was completely burnt.
Anothej; person saw a Tu£k tea^ a child out of thejwoml^
of its Armenian mother, anj^irp^'t against the wall.

Other facts, some of them worse than the few in-
stances given here, are recorded in the numerous reports
of the German Consuls at Alexandretta, Aleppo and
Mosul.* The Consuls are of opinion that, up to the
present date, about a million Armenians have perished "^l
by the massacres of the last months. Women and chil-
dren, who either were killed, or died from starvation,
probably form one half ofjthjs^nuniber . '^ ™~ "J

Conscience compels us to call attention to these things.
Though the Government, by the annihilation of the
Armenian people, only intends to further internal politi-
cal objects, the execution of the scheme has in many
respects the character of a persecution of Christians.

All the tens of thousands of young girls and women,
who have been dragged away to Turkish harems, and
the masses of children who have been collected by the

* See the last note (Editor's Ndte).
102

ALEPPO.

Government and distributed among Turks and Kurds,
are lost to the Christian Churches and are compelled to
go over to Islam. The opprobrious name of " Giaour **
is again used against the Germans.

In Adana I saw a troop of Armenian orphans march-"
ing through the streets under the escort of Turkish sol-
diers. The parents have been slaughtered; the children
must become Mohammedans. It has happened every-
where that adult Armenians were able to sa\e their lives
by declaring their readiness to go over to Islam. In
some places, however, Turkish officials, wishing to
throw dust in the eyes of Europeans, replied grandilo-
quently to Christians who had applied for admission
into the Mohammedan fold, that religion is not a thing
to play with, and preferred to have the petitioners killed.
Men like Talaat Bey and l^nver Pasha have repeatedly
said, thanking distinguished Armenians, who brought
them gifts, that they would have been still better pleased
if the givers had presented them as Mohammedans.
One of these gentlemen said to a newspaper reporter :
" Certainlv we are now punishing manv innocent
people, but we must protect oursel\<*s, even from those
who might become guilty in the future." vSuch reasons
are adduced bv Turkish statesnieiL in justijication of
the indiscriminate slaiight^er^ of defen£e]ej;^ \vcrnan and
childrerL- A German Catholic priest reports that l^nver
Pasha had told Monsignore Oolci, the Papal represen-
tative at Constantinople, that he would not rest wlnlg
one single Armenian was still lixing.^

The object of the deportations »s the extirpation of
the entire Armenian nation. This intention is also
evidenced bv the fact that the Turkish Government
refuses all help from missionaries. Sisters of Mercy,
and Europeans settled in the conntry. and tries syste-

I c ? ;

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

matically to prevent the giving of any such help. A
Swiss engineer was to have come before a court-martial,
because he had distributed bread in Anatolia among the
starving women and children belonging to a convoy of
deported persons. The Government did not scruple to
deport Armenian pupils and teachers from the German
schools at Adana and Aleppo, and Armenian children
from the German orphanages; the protests of the Con-
suls and of the heads of the institutions were left un-
heeded. The offer of the American Government to take
the deported persons to America on American sTiips
and at America's expense was reliTsecI^

What our German Consuls and many foreigners resid-
ing in Turkey think about the massacres of Armenians
will one day be known from their reports. As regards
the opinion of the German officers in Turkey I am
unable to say anything. I ojten noticed when in their
company an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to
change the subject whenever any German of strong feel-
ings and independent judgment began to speak about
the fearful sufferings of the Armenians J^

When Field-Marshal von der Goltz travelled to Bag-
dad and had to cross the Euphrates at Djerabulus, there
was a large encampment of half-starved, deported Arme-
nians there. Shortly before the Field-Marshal's arrival
these wretched people, as I was told in Djerabulus, were
driven under the whip a few miles off over the hills,
sick and dying persons among the number. When von
der Goltz passed through, all traces of the repulsive spec-
tacle had been removed. When, soon afterwards, I
visited the place with a few colleagues, we still found
in the more out of the way places corpses of men and

The italics are the Editor's.
104

ALEPPO.

children, remnants of clothes, and skulls and bones
which had been partly stripped of the flesh by jackals
and birds of prey.

The author of this report considers it out of the ques-
tion that the German Government, if it luere seriously
inclined to stem the tide of destruction even at this
eleventh hour, could find it impossible to hrimr the
Turkish Government to reason. If the Turks are really
so ivell disposed to us Germans as people say, then it
is surely permissible to show them to what an. extent
they compromise us before the whole civilized world,
if we, as their Allies, are to look on calmly, when hun-
dreds of thousands of our fellow-Christians in Turkey
are slaughtered, when their wives and dau^s^hters are
violated, and their children brought up in the faith of

Islam* Do no_t jthe ^Ijjrks un^rstand that their

barbarous acts are imputed to us, and that we Ger-
mans shall be accused either of criminal connivance
or of contemptible weakness if we shut our eyes^to the
abominable horrors which this war has brought forth^
and attempt~to ignore facts which are already known to
the whole world? If the Turks are really as intelligent
as people say, it should surely not be impossible to con-
vince them of the fact that, by extirpating the Christian
nations in Turkey, they are exterminating the produc-
tive factors and the intermediaries_of European tradg
ancL_^f^nprnl riyil j<;atiorr? If the! urks are really as
far-seeing as people say, they will not be blind to the
danger, that all civilized European States, after having
discovered the things which were done in Turkey during
the war, must form the conclusion that Turkey has for-
feited the right of governing herself, and has, once for
all, destroyed all belief in her capacity for becoming

* The italics are the Editor's.
105

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA, /

civilized, and in her tolerance. Will not the German
Government be acting in Turkey's own best interests,
if she prevents her from committing economic and moral
suicide ?

A\^ith this report 1 am attempting to reach the ear
of the Government through the accredited representa-
tives of the German people. These things, painful as
•they are, must no longer be passed over in silence
at the sittings of the Committees of the Reichstag.
Nothing would be more humiliating for us than the
erection of a costly palace at Constantinople com-
memorating German-Turkish friendship, while we are
unable to protect our fellow-Christians from barbari-
ties unparalleled even in the blood-stained history bf
Turkey. Would not the funds collected be better spent
in building orphanages for the innocent victims of
Turkish barbarism ?

When, after the Adana massacres in 1909, a sort of
"reconciliation banquet" took place, in which high
Turkish officials as well as the heads of the Armenian
clergy took part, an Armenian ecclesiastic made a
speech, the contents of which were communicated to
me by the German Consul, Biige, who was present.
He said: " It is true we Armenians have lost much in
the days of these massacres, our men, our women, our
children, and our possessions. But you Turks have
lost more. You have lost your honour."

If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians
ill Turkey as an internal affair, of no importance for
us except as making us sure of Turkey's friendship,
then it will be necessary to alter the whole orientation
of our German cultural policy. We must cease to send
German teachers to Turkey, and we teachers must no
longer speak to our pupils in Turkey~of German poefs^

106'

ALEPPO.

and German philosophers, of German culture and Ger-
man ideals, and least of all orGermaiLXIhristianity.

Three years ago the German Foreign Office sent me
as higher grade teacher to the German Technical School
at Aleppo. The Royal Provincial Education Board at
Madp^eburg, on my departure, specially enjoined me
to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in
me by the granting of leave of absence to take up the
office of teacher at Aleppo. I should not pexform-igy
duty as aGerm an official jmd__as an authorised rep re-
sen tat rveof__Germajijcuitii^re_^ in face of the atrocities
of which I was a witness, I were to remain silent and
passivelv look orTwhile the pupils entrusted to me are
?Iriven out to die of starvation in the desert.

To a person inquiring into the reasons which have
induced the Young Turkish Government to order and
carry out these terrible measures against the Armenians,
the follow ing answer might be given : —

The Young Turk has Ix^fc^re him the European ideal
of a united national State. He hopes to be able to
*' Turkify " the non-Turkish Mohammedan races —
Kurds, Persians, Arabs, and so on — hv administra-
tive measures and " bv Turkish school education and
by appeals to the common Mohammedan interest. He
is afraid of the Christian nations — :\jlL[^^£|J££|''» Syrians
and Greeks — on account of tlTHx_cultural and__£can-
'ofnic sirptTiorit\', and their religion appears to him
an obstacle impeding *' Turkification " bv peaceful
measures. Therefore thev must be extirpated or forced
into Moiiammedanism . The 'I'urks do not realise that
they are sawing off tin* l)ran(h on which thev them-
selves are sitting. W^ho is to bring projjress to Turkey,
exxept the (^reek:;^, the Armernans and the Syrians, who
constitute more than a quarter of _the populatumof the

lo"

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

Turkish Empire? The^'furks, the least gifted among
the races living in Turkey, themselves form onfy a
rninority of the population, and are^ still far behind
even the Arabs in civilisation. Is there anywhere any
TurkislTcommerce, " Turklsh^liandicraft, Turkish^manu-
facture, Turkish art, Turkish science? Even law and
religion, even the literary^ngua,ge, is borrowed^ from
the Subjected Arabs.

We teachersT^ho for years have taught Greeks,
Armenians, Arabs, Turks and Jews in German schools
in Turkey, can only declare that of all our pupils the
pure Turks are the least willing _ajid the least capable.
Whenever one hears about anything accomplished by
a Turk, one can be sure, in nine cases out of ten, that
the person concerned is a Circassian, or an Albanian,
or a Turk with Bulgar blood in his veins. Judging
from my own personal experience, I can only prophesy
that the real Turk will never accomplish anything in
commerce, manufacture or science.

The German newspapers have told us a great deal
lately about the Turkish "hunger for education"; it
is said that the Turks are thronging eagerly to learn
German, and even that courses of instruction in that
language for adults are being arranged in Turkey. No
doubt they are being arranged, but with what result?
They go on to tell one of a language course at a Tech-
nical School, which started with twelve Turkish teachers
as pupils. The author of this story, however, forgets
to add that after four lessons only six, after five lessons
only five, after six lessons only four, and after seven
lessons only three pupils presented themselves, so that
after the eighth lesson the course had to be abandoned,
before it had properly begun, owing to the indolence
of the pupils. I£the pupils had been Arn^eman^s, they
would have per"severed:~^owh to tji£ end~of the school

1 08

ALEPPO.

year, learnt patiently, and come away with a fair know-
ledge oFthe German languagg^.

\Vhat is the duty of German^^as well as of every
civihzed Christian nation, in face of the Armenian
massacres ? W e" must do alTwe can to preserve the
fives of the 500,000 Armenian women and children
who may now [beginning of 1916] be still in existence
in Turkey and who are abandoned to starvation — to
preserve them from a fate which would be a disgrace
to the whole civilized world. The hundreds of thou-
sands of deported women and ciiildren, who have been
left lying on the borders of the Mesopotamian desert,
or on the roads which lead there, .will not be able to
preserve their miserable existence much longer. How
long can people support life by picking grains of corn
out of horse dung and depending for the rest upon
grass? Manv of them will be beyond help on account
of the underfeeding, which has continued for many
months, and of the attacks of dysentery which are so
prevalent. In Konia there are still a few thousand
Armenians alive — educat^djpeople from Constantinople,
who were in easv circumstances before their deporta-
tion, physicians, authors and merchants; help for them
would still be possible, before they succumb to the fate
that threatens all. There are still i,5(X) healthy Arme-
nians— men, women and children, including grand-
mothers 60 years old and many children of six and
seven— who are at work breaking stones and shovelling
earth, on the part of the Bagdad Railway between Kiran
and Kntilli, near the big tunnel. At the j)resent moment
Superintendent l^ngineer Morf, of the Bagdad Railway,
is still providing for them, but their names too have
already been registered by the 'i\irkish Government.
As soon as their work is completed, that is to say, j^rob-
ablv in two or thrre months, and thev are n() longer

lOT)

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

wanted, " new homes will be assigned to them " — which
means that the men will be taken away and slaughtered,
the good-looking women and girls will find their way
into the harems, and the others will be driven about in
th€ desert without food, until the end comes.

The Armenian people has a claim to German help*
When a few years ago massacres of Armenians threat-
ened to break out in Cilicia, a German warship appeared
off Mersina. The commander called on the Armenian
"Katholikos" in Adana and assured him that as long
as there was any German influence in Turkey, massacres
like those perpetrated under Abdul Hamid would be
impossible * The same assurance was given by the
German Ambassador von Wangenheim [since deceased]
at an audience given to the Armenian Patriarch and the
President of the Armenian National Council in April,

1915-

Even apart from our common duty as Christians, we
Germans are under a special obligation to put a stop
to the complete extirpation of the surviving half million
of Armenian Christians. We are the /\llies of Turkey,
and having eliminated the influence of the French,
English and Russians, we are the only foreigners who
have any say in Turkey. We may indignantly repu-
diate the lies circulated in enemy countries accusing the
German Consuls of having organised the massacres.
We shall not, however, destroy the belief of the Turkish
people that Germany has ordered the Armenian massa-
cres, unless energetic action be at last taken by German
diplomatists and German officers. If only the one
reproach remained that our timidity and our weakness
in dealing with our Ally had prevented us from pre-
■serving' half a million women and children from death

* The italics are the Kdito'-'-.
1 10

ALEPPO.

by starvation, the image of the German War in the
mirror of history would be disfigured, for ail time,
by an ugly feature. It would be a serious mistake to
imagine that the Turkish Government would, of its
own accord, desist from the extermination of the women
and children, unless the strongest pressure were to be
exercised by the German Government. A short time
before my departure from Aleppo in Mav^_jai^6. all the
women and children encamped_jiMR£s-d-Ain, on the
Bagdad railway, w^hose number Was estimated at 20^^000,
were mercilessly sl^aughtered.

1 1 r

13. ALEPPO.

Message dated, 7th February, 1916, from Fraulein O. ;
Published in the German Journal, " Sonnenauf-
gang," April, 1916.

i want to beg our friends at home not to grow weary
of making intercession for the members of the Armenian
nation who are in exile here. If there is no visible pros-
pect of a change for the better, a few months more will
see the end of them all. They are succumbing in thou-
sands to famine, pestilence, and the inclemency of the
weather. The exiles at Hama, Floms, and in the neigh-
bourhood of Damascus are comparatively better of!".
They are left where they are, and can look about for
means of subsistence. But further East, along the
Euphrates, they are driven from place to place, plun-
dered and maltreated. Many of our friends are dead.

112

E. PLACES OF EXILE.

•

14. Der-el-Zor: Letter, dated 12th July, 1915, from
Schwester L. Mohring, a German Missionary,
describing her Journey from Bagdad to the
Passes of Amanus ; Published in the German
Journal, *' Sonnenaufgang," September, 1915.

At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert about six
days' journey from Aleppo, we found the big han full
to overflowing. All available rooms, roofs, and veran-
dahs were occupied by Armenians. The majority were
w^omen and children, but there w^ere also a certain num-
ber of men squatting on their quilts w herever they could
find a spot of shade. As soon as I heard that they were
Armenians, I started going round and talking to them.
They were the people of Furnus (a village in th<^ neigh-
bourhood of Zeitoun and Marash) ; herded together here
in these narrow quarters, they presented an extraordin-
arilv melancholy appearance. When I enquired for
children from our Orphanage at B.M., they brought me
a protegee of Sister O., Martha Karahashian. She gave
me the following account of what had happen<'d.

One day Turkish gendarmes had come to Furnus and
arrested and carried off a large number of men, to turn
them into soldiers. Neither they nor their famiUes knew
where they were being taken to. Those who remained

1 1

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

were told that they would have to leave their houses
within the space of four nours. They were allowed to
take with them as much as they could carry; they might
also take their beasts. After the lapse of the specified
time the poor people had to march out of their village
under the escort of soldiers (zaptiehs), without knowing
where they were going or whether they would ever see
their village again. To begin with, as long as they were
still among their mountains and had some provisions
left, things went well enough. They had been promised
money and bread, and were actually given some in the
early stages — as far as I can remember, it was 30 paras
(ijd.) per head per day. But very soon these rations
ceased, and there was nothing to be had but bulgur meal
— 50 drams (=150 grammes) per head per day. In this
fashion the Furnusli, after four weeks of extremely hard
travelling via Marash and Aleppo, had arrived at Der-
el-Zor. They had already been three weeks there in
the han, and had no idea what was to happen to them.
They had no more money left, and the provisions sup-
plied by the Turks had also dwindled almost to nothing.
It was days since they had had any bread. In the towns
they had been barred in at nights, and not allowed to
speak to the inhabitants. Martha, for instance, had not
been allowed at BM. to go to the Orphanage. She said
to me sadlv : *' We had two houses and we had to leave
everything; now there are moiihadjirs* in them." There
had been no massacres in Furnus, and the zaptiehs, too,
had treated the people well. They had suffered princi-
pally from lack of food and water on the march through
the burning hot desert. These Yailadji or Mountaineers,
as they called themselves, suffered twice as much from
the heat as other people.

Moslem immigrants from Europe,
114

THE PLACES OF EXILE.

The zaptiehs escorting them told us then that, since
the massacres, the Armenians had cherished such hatred
against the Turks that the latter had always to go in
fear of them. The intention now, they said, was to
employ the Armenians in building roads, and in this
way to move them on gradually to Bagdad. When
asked the "wherefore" of this, the zaptiehs explained
that the people had been in collusion with Russia. The
Armenians themselves declared that thev did not know
the reason for their expulsion.

Next day, at the midday rest, we fell in with a whole
convoy of Armenians. The poor people had made them-
selves primitive goat's hair tents after the manner of the
Kurds, and were resting in them. Pnit the majority lay
on the burning sand without defence against the scorch-
ing sun. On account of the number of sick, the Turks
had allowed them a day's rest. It is simply impossible
to conceive anything more disconsolate than such a
mass of people in the desert under the given circum-
stances. One could tell by their clothes that they had
lived in considerable prosperity, and now miserv was
written on their faces. "Bread!" "Bread!" was the
universal cry. Thev were the people of G<^ben, who had
been driven out with their Pastor. The latter told me
that every day there were five or six deaths among the
children and the sick. This very day they had only
just buried the mother of a girl about nine years old,
who was now quite alone in the world. They besought
me most urgently to take the child with me to the
Orphanage. The Pastor gave precisely the same ac-
count of what had happened as the little girl at Der-
el-Zor.

No one without personal experience of_cid(^ser^can
form anything approacTiing a concepti^n^of the miserv (

1^5

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

^nd distress. The desert is mountainous, but almost
entirely without shade. For days together the route
leads over rocks and is extremely difficult going. On
the left hand, as one comes from Aleppo, there is always
the Euphrates, which trails along like a streak of clay,
yet not near enough for one to be able to draw water
from it. The poor people must suffer intolerable pangs
of thirst; no wonder that so many sicken and die.

As it w-as the midday halt, we, too, unpacked our pro-
visions and prepared to eat. That morning we had had
bread and tea; our midday meal consisted once more of
hard Arab bread, cheese, and a tin of sardines. In
addition we had a bottle of mineral w^ater. It was not
very sumptuous, and yet it was not an easy task to eat
anything in face of that crowd of distressed and suffer-
ing humanity. We gave away as much as we possibly
could, and each of my three companions silently pressed
into my hand a medjidia (3s. 2d.) " for the poor people."
A bag of bread from Bagdad, as hard as stone, was
received with extraordinary gratitude. *' We shall soak
it in water and then the children will eat it," said the
delighted mothers.

Another scene comes back to me, which will give an
idea of their destitution. One of my companions threw
away an empty glass bottle. An old man threw him-
self upon it, begged to be allowed to take it for himself,
and gave profuse thanks for the boon. Then he went
down to the river, washed it out, and brought it back
filled with the thick clayey water, carrying it carefully
in his arms like a treasure, to thank us for it once more.
Now he had at least drinking water for his journey.

Followed by many good wishes we at last continued
on our way, with the impression of this misery still
weighing upon us. In the evening, when we reached

116

THE PLACES OF EXILE,

the village, we met yet another Armenian convoy of
the same kind. This time it was the people of Zeitoun.
There was the same destitution and the same complaint
about the heat, the lack of bread and the persecutions of
the Arabs. A little girl who had been brought up by
Kaiserswerth Deaconesses in the Orphanage at Beirout,
told us of her experiences in good German : —

" Why does God allow it? Why must we suffer like
this? Why did not they strike us dead at once!^" were
her complaints. " In the daytime we have no water for
the children and they cry of thirst. At night the Arabs
come to steal our bedding and clothes. Thev have taken
girls from us and committed outrages against women.
If we cannot drag ourselves further on the march, we
are beaten by the zaptiehs."

They also told us that other women had thrown them-
selves into the water to escape their shame, and that
mothers with their new-born children had done the
same, because they saw no other way out of their misery.
Along the whole desert route there was a dearth of food
— even for us who had money to pay for it — on account
of the number of l\irkish soldiers passing through and
resting at every han. In Zeitoun, too, no one had been
killed; the people could mention no instance of it.

The Armenian is bound up with his native soil; every
change of climate is extremely upsetting to him, and
there is nothing he misses so much as clear, cold water.
For this reason alone residence in the desert is intoler-
able for him. A speedy death for the whole family at
once seems a better fate to the mothers than to watch
death bv starvation slowlv approaching themselves and
their children.

On mv arrival at Aleppo I was at once asked about the
Armenians, and how they were doing for supplies. Their
case had been taken up in every possible way, and repre-

1 1

GEIUIANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

sentations had been made to the Government on their
behalf. All that could be obtained was permission for
the formation of an Armenian League of Help, which
the Government at Constantinople as well as the Vali
of Aleppo had sanctioned. The Armenian community
at Aleppo at once proceeded to raise a relief fund among
themselves, and have been supporting their poor, home-
less brethren with money, food and clothing.

In the Amanus mountains, on our second day's jour-
ney after leaving Aleppo, we met with Armenians again.
This time it was the people of Hadjin and the neighbour-
hood. They explained to us that they were going to
Aleppo, but they knew nothing beyond that. They had
only been nine days on the road, and did not ask for any
assistance. Compared with those in the desert, they
were faring sumptuousl)^ ; they had wagons with them
carrying their household goods, horses with foals, oxen
and cows, and even camels. The procession making
its w^ay up through the mountains seemed endless, and
I could not help asking myself how long their pros-
perity would last. They were still in the mountains on
their native soil, and had no suspicion of the terrors
of the desert. That was the last I saw^ of the Armenians,
but such experiences are unforgettable, and I publish
them here with the mpst earnest appeal for help. Many
of the Armenians may be guilty and may only be suffer-
ing what they have brought upon themselves, but the
poor women and children need our help.

118

15, Exiles from the Euphrates : Report from
Fraulein O.

On the 2oth of April, 1916, 1 arrived at Meskene, and
iound there 3,500 deported Armenians, and more than
100 orphans. A part of the people have settled here
as bakers and butchers, etc., even though Meskene is
but a halting place. All the rest are begging. In every
tent there are sick and dying. Anyone who cannot
manage to get a piece of bread by begging, eats grass
raw and without salt. Many hundreds of the sick are
left without any tent and covering, in the open, under
the glowing sun. I saw desperate ones throw them-
selves in gra\'e-trenches and beg the grave-diggers to
bury them. The (Government does not give the hungry
anv bread, and no tent to tliose who remain outside.
As I was in Meskene, there came a caravan of sick
women and children from Bab. They are in an inde-
scribable condition. They were thrown down from the
wagons like dogs. They cried for water; they were
given each a piece of dry bread, and were left there.
No one gave them any water, though they remained a
whole day under the hot sun. We had to work the
whole night to ameliorate their condition a little. Among
the orphans there was a small boy of four years old. It
was early in the morning, and I asked him if he had
^aten anything. He looked much amazed, and j^aid :
'* I have always gazed at the stars, and my dear God
has satisfied me." On my questioning him where his
father and motlu-r were, he said simply that thev were
dead in the desert.

In Meskene I gathered one hundred children under a
lent. I had their hair cut and their rags washed. 'I'hey

119

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

received daily some bread and some soup. As I had
to go further, I sought someone to care for the orphans.
I found a young widow from Had j in, who asked me
if she might take the children under her care. She
belonged to a good family and had received a good
education. She gave herself with an intense love to
the children-work. Ten days after my departure they
had sent the woman with the one hundred children
South. I found her a few weeks later in Sepka, clothed
in rags. She had lost her wits, and wandered about the
place asking, '* Where are my children? What have
you done with my children?" W^hen she had reached
Abu Hara she had spent all her money and was desti-
tute. The children were scattered — a prey to hunger.
In Der-el-Zor I found two of them, the only survivors;
they said that all the rest had perished.

In Meskene I saw more than 600 deported who had
lived in iNIuara till now, and who had spent a pitiful
sojourn of nine months there. They were now once
more persecuted and sent to different places. Slowly
and wearily they came on with their possessions on
their backs. As nourishment they cook grass, press the
water out, and make balls which they dry in the sun.

On the first of May, I came to Debsy, where I found
the above mentioned six hundred deported, all in
despair. They had not even been allowed to rest once
or even to gather grass, but had been cruelly driven
on. On the way I found people dying everywhere,
exhausted from hunger and thirst. They had remained
behind the caravan and must perish so painfully. Every
few minutes came a stench of corpses. The gendarmes
beat these stragglers, saying that they pretend to be
tired. In Debsy there are 3,000 deported. In Abu
Hara 6,000. In both places Ihe death rate is one per
cent, daily.

120

THE PLACES OF EXILE.

In Hama I found 7,000 deported, 3,000 of them hun-
gry and practically naked. Here there is no grass, the
locusts have consumed everything. I saw the people
were gathering locusts and eating them raw or cooked.
Others were looking for the roots of grasses. They
catch street dogs, and like savages pounce upon dead
animals, whose flesh they eai eagerly without cooking.
They showed me how they bury the dead, shallow near
the tents.

In Rakka alone there are ^jOc^deported in tents.
The camp is situated on both banks of the Euphrates,
but these people are not allowed to enter the city. Rich
people are paying from T£30-40 to get permission from
those in authority to live for a length of time in the
city. Everywhere the same lamentable pictures repreat
themselves.

In Sepka there are 1,500 persons who have bought
the privilege of establishing themselves there. The
rest, 6,000, remain in camps on the banks of the
Euphrates. There is great misery here. Some in
despair throw themselves into the river. In each
deportation from one place to another, at least five
or six perish through the brutal illtreatment of the
accompanying gendarmerie. They expect to extract
money from the poor, and exact vengeance with
heavy blows when they receive nothing. Many are
transported on boats in the Euphrates.

In Tibne I found^5jOga — everywhere we met caravans
of deportees. In every Arabian village there are some
families, jn ev£JX-Arabian ^loijse youn^ women and
girls. Here the Government is giving 150 gr. of bread
tcTevery poor person daily. Children and grown-ups
search among the garbage heaps for food, and what-

121

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

ever is eatable (chewable) is eaten. At the butchers'
people wait eagerly for scraps.

Of every fifty persons who start from Rakka or
Sepka on boats, twenty arrive, often even less. At the
time of my arrival, the Government had gathered 20a
orphans in a house in Der-el-Zor. At my departure (six
weeks later) there were 800. They get daily a little bread
and some soup. In the meantime 12,000 deported came
to Der-el-Zor. JEvery day w^e see caravans going in
the direction of Mosul. Nevertheless, at my depar-
ture, there were at Der-el-Zor and in its neighbour-
hood over 30,000 Armenians. Those who hav-e means
are getting permission to delay. The rest must proceed
further. The deported are especially badly treated in
the region of Der-e'1-Zor. The people are driven back
and forward with whip blows, and cannot even take
their most urgent necessities. On my return I met
new caravans everywhere. The people have the appear-
ance of lost men. We often see a whole row^ of ghastly
forms rising suddenly out of a grave and asking for
bread and water. They have all dug their graves and
lie waiting for death. People of better standing, who'
cannot make up their minds to beg for a piece of bread,
lie, when exhausted, on their beds, till death comes ta
release them. No one looks after them. In Sepka a
preacher from Aintab told me that parents have often
killed their children. At the Government investigation
it was shown that some people had eaten their children.
It has happened that dying people have been fought
over in order to secure their flesh for food.

Another report from the region of Meadine and Ana,
south of Der-el-Zor, where there are thousands of
deported, w^ill be sent by the next mail. Our mes-
senger returned to Aleppo on the 20th June. On the
26th he was again on a journey to the South.

122

APPENDIX.

Reports by Mohammedan Officers in the Turkish
Army as to incidents witnessed by them.

(1) A.B.'s Report,

In April, 1915, 1 wa.'^ ciuartered at Erzeroum. An
order came from Constantinople that Armenians inhabit-
ing the frontier towns and villages be deported to the
interior. It was said then that this was only a precau-
tionary measure. I saw at that time large convoys of
Armenians go ihrougli Lrzcrouni. They were mostly
old men, women and children. Some of the able-bodied
men had been recruited in the Turkish Army and many
had fled to Russia. In May, 1915, I was transferred
to Trebizond. in July an order came to deport to the
interior all the Armenians in the Vilayet of Trebizond.
Being a member of the Court .Martial, I knew that depor-
tations meant massacres. *^

Tile Armenian liishop of Trebizond was ordered to
proceed under escort to I^rzcroum to answer for charges
trumped up against him. iUit instead of I*!rzeroum he
was taken to Baipurt and from there to (iumush-Khana.
'I'he (iovernor of tli«' latler p\c\co was thcFi Colonel
Abdul-Kader Aintabli, of tli<' Ceneral Stall". He is
famous for his atr(jcitie.s against the Armenians. lie
had the Bishop murdered at night. The l)ishop of
r.rzeroum wab also murdered at (jumush-Khana.

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

Besides the deportation order referred to above, an
Imperial " Iradeh " was issued ordering that all deser-
ters, when caug-ht, should be sliot without trial. The_
secret order read

rh<

Armenians " in lieu of deserters/

<ft __Th^ Suitauls "Iradeh" was accompaniedlDy^^ar "tetua"
from Sheikh-ul-lslam stating that the Armenians had
shed Moslem blood and their killing was lawful. Then
the deportations started. The children were kept back
at first. The Government opened up a school for the
grown-up children, and the American Consul of Trebi-
zond instituted an asylum for the infants. When the
first batches of deported Armenians arrived at Gumush-
Khana all able-bodied men were sorted out, with the
excuse that they were going to be given work. The
women and children were sent ahead under escort with
the assurance by the Turkish authorities that their final
destination was Mosul and that no harm will befall
them. The men kept behind were taken out of town
in batches of 15 or 20, lined up on the edge of ditches

prepared beforehand, shot, and thrown into the ditcfies.
Hundreds of men were shot every day in a similar
manner. The women and children were attacked on their
^vay by the " Shotas " and armed bands organised by
the Turkish Government, who attacked them and seized
a certain number. After plundering and committing the
most dastardly outrages on the women and children,
they massacred them in cold blood. These attacks
were a daily occurrence until every woman and child
had been got rid of. The military escorts had strict
orders not to interfere with the " Shotas."

The children that the Government had taken in charge
were also deported and jnassacred. ' " ^

The italics are the Editor's.

124

APPENDIX. •

The infants in the care of the American Consul at
Trebizond were taken away on the pretext that they
were going to be sent to Sivas, where an asylum had
been prepared for them. They_were taken out to sea
in little boats, ^t some distance out they were stabbed
to death, put in sacks and thrown into the sea. A few
days later some of their little bodies were washed up
on the shore of Trebizond.

In July, 191 5, I was ordered to accompany a convoy
of deported Armenians. It was the last batch from
Trebizond. There were in the convoy 120 men, 700
children, and about 400 wornen. From Trebizond I
took them to Gumush-Khana. Here the 120 men were
taken away, and, as I was informed later, they were all
killed. At Gumush-Khana I was ordered to take the
women and children to Erzindjan. Ori_the wav I saw
thousands of bodies of Armenians unburied. Several
bands oF" Shotas^' met us on the way and wanted me
to hand oxer to them women and children. But I per-
sistently refused. I did leave on the way about 200
children with Moslem families who were willing to take
care of them and educate them. The '' Mutessarif " of
Erzindjan ordered me to proceed with the convoy to
Kamach. At the latter place the authorities refused to
take charge of the women and children. I fell ill and
wanted to go back, but I was told that as long as the
Armenians in mv charge we re a 1 i \- e I would be sent
from one place to the other^. Howener, f managed^o
include mv batch with the deported Armenians that
had come from Erzeroum. In charge of the latter was
a colleague of mine, F.ffendi, from the Gen-
darmerie. He told me afterwards that after leaving
Kamach thev came to a \alley where the Euphrates
ran. A band of ** Shotas " sprang out and stopped the
convoy. Thev ordered (he escort to keep away, and

125

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA,

then shot every one of the Armenians and threw thern
into the rjyej\_

At Trebisond the Moslems %vere warned that if they

sheltered Arvienians they would he liable to the death

penalty *

t Government ofiicials at Trebizond picked out some of

I the prettiest Armenian women of the best families. After

) committing the worst outrages on them, they had them

^ killed.

r Cases of rape of women and girls even publicly are
) very numerous. They were systematically murdered-
after the outrage.

The Armenians deported from Erzeroum started with
their cattle and whatever possessions they could carry.
When they reached Erzindjan they became suspicious,
seeing that all the Armenians had already been deported.
The Vali of Erzeroum allayed their fears, and assured
them most solemnly that no harm would befall them.
He told them that the first convoy should leave for
Kamach, the others remaining at Erzeroum until they
received word from their friends informing them of their
safe arrival to destination. And so it happened. Word
came that the first batch had arrived safelv at Kamach,
which was true enough. But the men were kept at
Kamach and shot, and the women and children were
massacredby the '' Shotas_l'_afteiMeaving that towrTT
The Turkish officials in charge of the deportation and
extermination of the Armenians w^ere : At Erzeroum,
Bihaa Eddin vShaker Bey; at Trebizond, Naiil Bey,
Tewfik Bey Monastirly, Colonel of Gendarmerie, the
Commissioner of Police; at Kamach, the mem.ber of
Parliament for Erzfndjan. The " Shotas' " headquar-
ters ivere also at Kamach. Their chief was the Kurd

* The italics are the Editor's.
T26

APPENDIX,

Murzabey, who boasted that he alone had killed 70,000
'Armenians. Afterwards he was thouf^^lit to be danger-
ous by the Turks, and thrown into prison charged with p P
having hit a gendarme. He was eventually executed in -
secret.

(2) G.D.'s Report.

In August, 1915, in the suburbs of Mush 1 saw large
numbers of dead bodies of Armenians, men, women and
children, lying in the fields. Some had been shot, some
stabbed, and most of them had been horribly mutilated.
The women were mostly naked.

In the villages around Mush I saw old women and
children wandering in the streets, haggard and emaci-
ated.

In the same month, in a camp outside Bitlis, I saw
collected about 500 women, girls, and children, guarded
by gendarmes. I asked the latter what was to become
of these people. They said that they were be'.m^ de-
ported, but that they had orders to let the Bands deal
ivith them on the ivay. The Bands had been orfi^anized
by the Turkish Government for the purpose of
massacrinjs^ the Armenians. They ivere formed by
Kurds, Turkish gendarmes and criminals ivho had been
specially set free.*

On the river at Bitlis I saw quite a number of bodies
of Armenians floating on the water, and some washed
up on the banks. The smell was pestilential and the
water undrinkable.

In the same month of August, in the country at a
distance of about two hours from Zaart, I saw the bodies
of about 15,000 massacred Armenians. Thev were piled
up on top of each olher in two ra\ ines. 'Vhv Armenian

* Tho italics arf^ the Editor's.
127

GERMANY, TURKEY AND ARMENIA.

Bishop of Zaart was, at his own request, taken to a cave
near by and shot.

On my return from Zaart to Mush, in a village of the
suburbs of Mush over 500 Armenians, mostly women
and children, were herded up in a stable and locked in.
The gendarmes threw [laming torches through an open-
ing in the ceiling. They were all burnt alive. I did not
go near, but I distinctly saw the flames and heard the
screams of the poor victims.

I heard from reliable persons that women in the family
way had their bodies cut open and the child snatched
out and thrown aw^ay.

At Mush the streets were strewn with bodies of Arme-
nians. Every Armenian who ventured out of doors w-as
instantlv killed.

Even men of great age, blind and invalids, w-ere not
spared.

From Mush to Hinis, at short distances from each
other, I saw piles of bodies of Armenians in the fields
alongside the road.

Between Sherkes-Koi and Hinis I saw two ravines
filled with corpses of Armenians, about 400 in each
ravine, mostly men. Another ravine wt.s filled with
bodies of little children.

At Khara-Shuban I saw a large number of bodies of
Armenians floating on the river Murad.

When I went to Erzindjan I was told that wholesale
massacres were perpetrated at Erzindjan, Mamakhatoun,
and the whole countrv around. Besides those that the
Turks had killed and burnt alive, they threw thousands
of them into the Euohrates. A lar^e number of Arme-
nians, seeing that their death was inevitable, and fear-
ing v.'orse atrocities, preferred to throw themselves into
the Euphrates.

Privtfd in Great Br'ifaiv hy J. J. Keliher (^ Co., TJd.,
Marf<lial.<'pa Jioad , London, S.E.

^^^ Germany, Turkey, and Arrnenir,
A7G4

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Full text of "Germany, Turkey and Armenia; a selection of documentary evidence relating to the Armenian atrocities from German and other sources"

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